From Riverdale to the Moon
by Booksaboutnothing
Summary: A retelling of the Space Race using the cast of Archie, much of this will be historically accurate but with different people. Meant to be both educational and entertaining.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

 _October 14, 1947, Muroc Army Air Field_

Thirteen year-old Betty Cooper watched from a distance as technicians worked to ensure that the B-29 bomber was ready for its flight. Her father, Major Hal Cooper, was the pilot of the plane. However he was the star of the show today. Attached to the underside of the plane was another smaller aircraft, one unlike any other.

Called the X-1, instead of a propeller or even one of the new jet engines the X-1 was instead powered by a rocket engine. The rocket allowed the X-1 to go faster than any other airplane in existence. The plan today was for the pilot Captain. Charles "Chuck" Yeager, to break the sound barrier, some that had never been done before.

The Bell X-1 didn't take off on its own. Its rocket engine wouldn't fire for long enough to for it to take off and get up to speed and the speed of sound was slower at high altitude as compared to on the ground, a fact Betty didn't completely understand but it had something to do with the air being thinner. Instead the B-29 which Betty's father was flying, would carry the X-1 up into the air and drop it. After gliding a short distance the X-1 would fire its engine and basically attempt to go as fast it could and hopefully go faster than the speed of sound.

Betty watched as the technicians had finished their preparations and the B-29 fired up its engines. Slowly the plane taxied to the end of the runway. Betty's eyes however were on the orange X-1 attached to the B-29's starboard wing the entire time.

Once it was in position the B-29's engines spun up to full power and the big plane rumbled down the runway. Slowly it rotated and took off into the air going into a long steading banking climb. Soon it became difficult to make out any distinguishing features.

"Pass me the binoculars!" Betty said excitedly to her mother.

Betty's mother Alice handed her a pair of binoculars and Betty used them to watch as the B-29 climbed higher and higher before it began to level off. A few minutes later Betty saw the small orange X-1 drop free from the B-29. It's rocket engine fired and the plane shot forward at amazing speed and began climbing even higher. Betty then saw a white cloud form around the X-1's tail and then a few seconds later there was a loud boom. For a moment she had thought that the X-1 had blown up but she saw that it was still streaking across the sky. She then realized that it had happened, the X-1 had broken the sound barrier.

Betty was grinning widely as she watched the X-1's engine finally burn out and it began to glide to the ground. She turned to her mother.

"One day I'm gonna fly even faster and higher than that," Betty said to her mother.


	2. Chapter 1 - The First Seven

**Chapter 1 – The First Seven**

* * *

 _March 31, 1959, Edwards Air Force Base (formerly Muroc Army Airfield)…_

A group of six pilots made their way along the tarmac towards a group of parked aircraft. All six of them were some of the best test pilots in the US Military coming from the Air Force, Navy and Marines. The six of them had spent the last several months going through the rigorous selection process to be the first men in space. These six young men had been chosen because not only were they all excellent pilots but they were some of the brightest, they were physically fit and they had passed a series of psychological tests.

Three of them were from the Air Force, they were Captain Harvey Kinkle, a striking brown haired young man of 28 years of age who was originally from Mitchell, Indiana; Captain Forsythe "Jughead" Jones a tall and thin lad of 27 years with dark hair who was originally from Oklahoma City; and Frankie Valdez a shorter 30 year old from Chicago, Illinois.

Two of them were from the Navy, they were Captain Archie Andrews, a freckle-faced red-head who was 29 years old from New Hampshire; and Adam Chisholm a young man with light brown hair who was 30 years old and from Boulder Colorado.

The last one was from the Marines, Captain Reggie Mantle, a handsome dark haired young man who was 29 years old and was from Columbus, Ohio.

"So do you think this is it?" Archie asked the others. "Are we the six men who are going to go to space?"

"I don't think so," Frankie replied. "I overheard that they were bringing in a civilian pilot as well."

"A civilian?" Reggie said incredulously. "Why would they do that?"

Frankie shrugged.

"I heard that he flew for McDonnell, one of their in house test pilots," Frankie replied. "And they're the ones that have been contracted to build the space ship."

"I guess that makes sense," Harvey said.

Just then they heard the sound of a jet engine they all looked to see a fighter jet come streaking by, one that none of them had ever seen before. By the markings on it, it looked to be a prototype of some sort. They suddenly realized that the plane was flying directly towards them as though it was going to dive right into them.

"Oh crap," Jughead exclaimed.

All of them scattered. However at the last moment the jet levelled off and banked, the pilot waving at them before flying off. The six pilots were all still recovering when they were approached by a man they all recognized. Dr. Elmer Flutesnoot, he was the man that had headed up the selection process and was the first director of the new National Aeronautic and Space Administration.

"Welcome gentlemen welcome," Flutesnoot greeted them.

"What was that?" Reggie asked incredulously pointing at the prototype jet that was circling around and coming in for a landing.

"That was the final member of your little group," Flutesnoot replied.

The pilots all turned to watch as the jet landed and taxied across the runway towards them. It came to a stop and the pilot climbed out of the cockpit and began walking towards them.

"Gentlemen I'd like you to meet the final member of the Astronaut Corps, Miss Betty Cooper," Flutesnoot said.

As the pilot removed the helmet, the others were all surprised to see the young blonde woman beneath it. Her hair was a bit messy from having been wearing the helmet.

"That was a fancy bit of flying there," Archie complimented her.

"Thank you," Betty responded with a grin.

"Now wait just one minute," Reggie interrupted then turned to Flutesnoot. "Are you telling me that I have to compete against a woman to be the first man in space."

"You don't have to compete against me for that," Betty said. "Even if I go first you'll still be the first man."

Reggie turned and scowled at her.

"You know what I mean," he said.

"Please, you will all have an equal chance. Whoever goes first will be chosen based on their merit," Flutesnoot said trying to calm the situation down.

"And how will you be chosing that?" Frankie asked.

"You will all be participating in various tests," Flutesnoot said. "We will be evaluating your results to pick the best candidate for the first flight."

"That'll be me," Reggie said confidently.

"But you will also have to learn to work together," said Flutesnoot. "You seven our the best candidates, even if you aren't first you will all get a chance to travel into space if all goes according to plan. And the best way to make sure that each of you succeeds is for you to all work together."

The seven soon to be astronauts each looked at each other sizing each other up.

"So what do we do first?" Harvey asked. "I take it you brought us here to fly?"

"Eventually yes," Flutesnoot replied. "But the first thing is that you all need to get to know each other. After all we're introducing you to the public in just over a week."

* * *

 _April 9_ _th_ _1959, Washington D.C.,…_

The NASA officials were surprised by the massive turnout of media for the introduction of America's first astronauts. All three television networks, just about every major newspaper and then some had shown up.

NASA's spokesman for the event was John Jenkins, a white-bearded man who looked a little like a skinny Santa Claus.

"Thank you everyone for coming today," he said to the large audience. "We're here today to introduce America's first astronauts. These courageous souls will be the first to take the challenge of orbiting the Earth in our Mercury program. At this time I will be introducing the astronauts one at a time giving you a brief history for each of them. We have selected three astronauts from the Air Force, two from the Navy, one of the Marine Corps and one civilian. This has been a rigorous selection process with many medical, psychological and mental tests. All seven of them have experience as test pilots, a skill we consider crucial to this project."

A reporter raised his hand to ask a question.

"Please hold all questions until after the astronauts have been introduced," Jenkins said. "So our first astronaut, from the Air Force, Captain Frankie Valdez."

There was polite applause from the gathered press as Frankie came out from a side entrance dressed in a brown suit and took a seat at table facing the press with microphones set up. Camera flashes went off as photographers took his picture.

"Captain Valdez of Chicago joined the Air Force in 1949 and went on to serve in the Korean War flying B-50 bomber craft, flying over twenty missions. Upon transferring back to America he tested our new B-47 and B-52 bombers and also the B-57 Canberra."

"Next, also from the Air Force is Captain Harvey Kinkle." Jenkins introduced.

Harvey came out next wearing a dark green suit and took a seat next to Frankie as photographers snapped his picture.

"Captain Kinkle, from Mitchell, Indiana, joined the Air Force in 1951 and served in the Korean War flying F-86 Sabres scoring 7 kills. After the war he returned and served at Edwards Air Force base testing out our latest supersonic fighter aircraft."

"And our last Air Force Pilot, is Captain Forsythe Jones," Jenkins introduced.

Jughead made his way out wearing an olive suit and took a seat next to Harvey.

"Please, call me Jughead," he said into the microphone in front of his.

"Why Jughead?" somebody called out.

"Please save questions for after the introductions," Jenkins reminded the press. "Now Captain Jones from Oklahoma City, joined the Air Force in 1952 but was not deployed to Korea. Instead he became one of our chief pilots in the design of the F-102 and F-106 interceptor aircraft."

"Moving on to our Naval Pilots," Jenkins continued. "First is Captain Archibald Andrews from Keene, New Hampshire."

Archie made his way out wearing a navy blue suit and took a seat next to Jughead.

"Captain Andrews joined the Navy in 1948 and became a Naval Aviator in 1952. He served onboard the _USS Oriskany_ flying Grumman F9F's at the end of the war before returning to Moffett Field to test fly various naval aircraft."

"Our next Naval pilot from Boulder, Colorado, is Captain Adam Chisholm," Jenkins introduced.

Adam made his way out and took his seat next to Archie, he was wearing an identical navy blue suit.

"Captain Chisholm became a naval pilot in 1950 and served three tours during the Korean War and was credited with 2 kills. After the war he was assigned to Moffett Field where he was one of the test pilots for the F4D Skyray."

"And on to our Marine Corp Pilot," Jenkins continued. "From Columbus, Ohio, Captain Reggie Mantle."

Reggie made his way out wearing a black suit looking to most stylish of the six so far. There were more camera flashes for him than any of the others.

"Captain Mantle has served in the Marines since 1949," Jenkins said. "He flew 90 different missions in the Korean War and scored 3 kills. Afterwards he became the military's chief test pilot for the new F8U Crusader and just two years ago flew the first transcontinental supersonic flight."

Reggie was quite happy to pose for the cameras.

"And our last astronaut, is a civilian test pilot for McDonnell Aircraft the manufacturers of our spacecraft," Jenkins said. "As well as the youngest of our astronauts, and the only woman, Miss Betty Cooper."

There was a shocked gasp from the press. The camera flashes were blinding as Betty made her way out and took the last seat next to Reggie who seemed a little annoyed that the attention had gone off of him and onto Betty.

"Miss Cooper has worked for McDonnell since she was 18 years old," Jenkins said. "She has been flying since she was 15 and recently earned her Master's degree in aeronautical engineering. She has been instrumental in the development of one of our newest naval fight aircraft, although details of that remain classified at this time."

"So at this time we will now open the floor up to questions," Jenkins said.

Not surprisingly many of the questions were directed towards Betty. Asking her about such things like if she was worried about not being able to have children and marriage and a great many questions not at all related to the actual project itself. Betty was annoyed by these questions but she had expected them and she deflected them saying that her focus was on helping Project Mercury succeed.

However the other astronauts got several questions themselves, particularly Reggie. They all talked about their goals for the project as well as answering questions about their personal lives.

The questions went on for about an hour before the astronauts left. Most of them were relieved to be out of the spotlight, although Reggie was disappointed as he enjoyed the attention. They were all eager to focus on the purpose of Project Mercury, putting a man in space. The Soviets had gotten the jump on America when they launched Sputnik 1, and further still when they put a dog in space aboard Sputnik 2. But America was determined to be the first to put a man into space, but while the public was all abuzz there was a lot of work to do before that would be possible.


	3. Chapter 2 - Freedom 7

**Chapter 2 – Freedom 7**

* * *

 _April 12, 1961, Riverdale, Florida…_

Captain Archie Andrews awoke early that morning ready to head to the Cape Canaveral space center for training. He and the other astronauts had spent almost two years training in the recently built community of Riverdale just outside of Cape Canaveral and the day was almost upon them. Back in January, Archie had been the one chosen to go on the first flight of Project Mercury.

However a test launch with a chimpanzee passenger on January 31 had shown some flaws with the Redstone rocket that was to be used to launch him into space, it had flown faster and on a high trajectory than desired. Much to Archie's frustration the scientists and engineers at NASA decided that they needed to test the Redstone booster once more before the first human space flight. That test had taken place on March 24 using a boilerplate Mercury capsule.

The test flight had gone exactly as according to plan which meant that the Redstone was ready to launch Archie into space.

Archie was getting dressed when the phone rang and he went to answer it.

"Hello?" Archie answered the phone.

"Good Morning Captain Andrews," came the voice of Dr. Dilton Doiley, one of the lead developers of the rockets. He was the protégé of Dr. Wernher von Braun, the head of the rocket development program.

"Dr. Doiley, what's this about?" Archie asked.

"I just wanted to let you know that unfortunately you won't be the first person to travel in space," Dilton said.

"What do you mean?" Archie asked angrily thinking that he had been bumped from the mission.

"Earlier today the Soviets successfully launched a man into space," Dilton answered.

Archie had a bit of relief but he was still disappointed.

"We don't have the details yet, the Soviets haven't released a statement but all signs point to this being a success." Dilton reported. "In fact, they even managed to achieve orbit."

That was disappointing. Archie's flight was only intended to be suborbital simply to test that a human could survive space flight as the Redstone booster was not capable of carrying the Mercury capsule to orbit. For that NASA was developing the more powerful Atlas booster, however it was still at least six months away from being ready. It was just another example of how the Soviets were ahead of the Americans in terms of rocket development.

"The Soviets may have beaten us this time," Archie said. "But we'll get them back."

"Yes," Dilton agreed. "If the intelligence reports are to be believed the Soviets are likely pushing the limits of their technology with little regard for safety, simply to beat us."

"Well so far they're succeeding," Archie said.

"Yes, but they are likely to end up suffering a setback," Dilton said.

That wasn't exactly comforting for Archie who had expected to be the first man in space.

"I'll see you later today for training," Archie said before hanging up.

 _May 5, 1961, Cape Canaveral, Florida…_

Archie was seated in the capsule of his ship called _Freedom Seven_. He had entered the capsule at 5:15 AM, just over two hours before the scheduled launch time of 7:20 AM. That morning he had a breakfast of steak and eggs something that the other astronauts thought would make a good tradition for launch day.

However the launch had been held a further hour for the weather to clear up, good visibility was of importance for the flight. There were several other holds for minor issues, a small leak, and a faulty power supply. By now Archie had been sitting in the capsule for more than 3 hours and he had the need to urinate, however they hadn't given him anything to piss into because the flight was only expected to last 20 minutes.

"I really need to take a piss in here," Archie complained over the radio.

Opening up the hatch and letting him out to pee and going through suiting him up again would further delay launch by another hour at least and there was no guarantee that the skies would stay clear.

"Sorry you're just going to have to hold it," the controller in the blockhouse responded.

"If you don't let me out then I'll just piss in my suit," Archie responded angrily.

There were several medical electrodes attached to his body which were quite sensitive. His urine could cause them to short out causing the loss of valuable medical data.

"Uh that's a negative, that can short out the medical equipment," the blockhouse said.

"Then just turn the power for it off," Archie said angrily.

After a moment to consider the blockhouse agreed to his demand and Archie was able to relieve himself. Because of the position he was in the urine pooled behind his back and due to the flow of oxygen through his suit it quickly dried up, although his suit did retain a smell of urine. The whole event only took a few minutes and then the medical sensors were turned back on and the countdown resumed.

Finally at 9:34 AM the engines ignited and the Mercury-Redstone rocket lifted up into the air as it was watched live by millions of Americans. Archie experienced a rattling ride for over two minutes as the Redstone booster carried him ever higher and faster until the engine shut down as it ran out of fuel. Ten seconds later he felt a small jolt as the escape tower, which was no longer needed, was jettisoned and soon after that the attitude control system oriented the capsule so that the heat shield on the bottom was pointed towards earth for re-entry. So far everything had gone as expected.

"Freedom Seven you are go to test the manual controls," came the call from ground control.

Using the flight stick Archie tested the controls of the capsule. The first thing he did was pitch up the nose to the required 34 degrees for re-entry before he tested yaw and roll controls. He was surprised that the ships responses were quite similar to the simulator he had practiced in on the ground.

Having tested the controls his next task was to make observations of the ground. However rather than windows the capsule had a periscope. However he found it rather difficult to use and he wasn't able to distinctly make out anything other than distinguishing clouds from land and land from sea or lakes.

He then noticed that the ship had developed a slight shift as it passed thought its peak altitude. He switched to a "fly-by-wire" control mode that let the automatic system fire the maneuvering rockets for the desired positioning rather than having to manually control it. The yaw and roll were correct however the pitch had become too shallow. As Archie adjusted the pitch the capsule's automatic retrorockets fired sending him into re-entry.

He then felt the retrorockets, which were attached to the heat shield, jettison. However the confirmation light for the retrorockets being jettisoned failed to come on. Archie was able to quickly over ride it so he was able to resume control of the ship.

Soon the capsule began its re-entry. The automatic systems kept the capsule oriented as it plummeted towards Earth. Archie experienced g-forces that peaked at 11.6 g until he felt the drogue chute deploy slowing the capsule's decent and then the main chute deployed. The capsule then splashed down into the Atlantic Ocean fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds after launch.

A few minutes later a recovery helicopter arrived and lifted the capsule partly out of the water allowing Archie to exit through the main hatch. He climbed out and into a sling harness and was lifted up into the helicopter which carried both him and the capsule to the _USS Lake Champlain_ , which was waiting nearby.


	4. Chapter 3 - Liberty Bell 7

**Chapter 3 – Liberty Bell 7**

* * *

 _May 25, 1961, Washington D.C. …_

President John F. Kennedy appeared in front of congress. He had just been inaugurated as President in January and in April had watched as the Soviets had beaten American in putting the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin. America had responded shortly thereafter with the suborbital flight of Archie Andrews, but it was clear that the Soviets had an advantage.

After consulting with NASA, his Vice President and the rest of his cabinet he had come up with an achievement that should they accomplish it, would cement America's space superiority.

"This nation should commit itself to the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth," the JFK proposed.

The goal required Congress to approve the expansion of NASA's budget and the establishment of a Manned Spacecraft Center. It was decided that the small little community of Riverdale just outside of Cape Canaveral would make the most sense for this. Kennedy's proposal was met with approval by the majority of Congress and NASA began ramping up their plans for their space programs. However before they could even consider sending a man to the moon, first they needed to put on in orbit. However that was still several months away. In the meanwhile they had a second suborbital test planned.

* * *

 _July 21, 1961, Cape Canaveral, Florida…_

Captain Harvey Kinkle was sitting inside his Mercury capsule waiting for the final countdown to launch. He had been sitting in the capsule for nearly three and a half hours as various holds had been called for, including one about one of the 70 bolts that held the hatch to his craft shut.

Harvey had served as Archie's back up on the previous spaceflight in preparation for his own flight. Harvey had not been focused at all on who got to go first and had said from the start of the program that he didn't care if he was first or last to be chosen to fly which had resulted in his selection as the second astronaut.

Harvey heard the engine roar but didn't feel any movement immediately. However a moment later he felt the rocket lift off from the pad slowly climbing into the sky in what was a surprisingly smooth ride. As the rocket gained speed and altitude however the vibrations became greater, but never enough that Harvey found his vision impaired.

Unlike Archie's capsule, Harvey's had been designed with a window instead of the cumbersome periscope. As the rocket continued upwards Harvey noticed that the horizon suddenly went from light blue to pitch black.

Just then his attention was distracted as the escape tower was jettisoned, it purpose no longer required. Harvey watched as the tower shot off into the distance, it's solid-fuel rocket engines trailing smoke. Then two minutes and twenty-two seconds after launch he felt the rocket engine of the Redstone cut off. The whole assembly continued to coast upwards for ten second until there was a popping noise as the capsule separated from the booster, posigrade rockets forcing the two apart. Harvey peered out his window but he was unable to see the booster as it fell back to earth.

With the capsule now separated it was time to Harvey to test out the controls which had been redesigned.

"It's really hard to concentrate on my instruments with this view out the window," Harvey commented to ground control.

"Well do your best," came the reply from Archie who was serving as the Capsule Communicator or CAPCOM.

Testing the controls Harvey found that the response were sluggish and over exaggerated when compared to the simulator, however when he activated the new Rate Command Control System he found that the response of the craft was perfect, however the fuel consumption was rather high.

After testing pitch and yaw, Harvey rolled the capsule so that his window was looking towards the ground. He was able to make certain land masses below along the Florida coast.

As his capsule reached a height of 118 miles it was time to prepare for re-entry. Harvey initiated the retrorocket sequence which made the whole sensation of space flight seem odd, as though it had reversed, which in a way was true.

Harvey saw two of the spent retrorockets shoot past his window as the confirmation light for their jettison came on. Harvey pitched his craft up to point the heat shield downwards and as he did cockpit was filled with sunlight making it difficult to read some of his dials. Harvey continued to report on his status until radio contact was lost by all the ionizing particles outside the capsule.

At 21,000 feet the drogue chute opened slowing the capsules decent and caused some vibrations in the cabin. Then at about 12,000 feet the main chute opened and the capsule began it's slow decent towards the ocean. Harvey began dumping the remains of his control fuel as it could prove hazard while trying to egress from the capsule.

The capsule splashed down in an impact that was milder than what Harvey had expected. The capsule rolled over on its side and bobbed in the ocean for a while before it righted itself. Harvey could hear the rescue helicopters outside approaching to retrieve him. He prepared the hatch cover detonator by removing the pin and sitting back and waiting for the helicopters let him know that they were in position.

All of a sudden the hatch blew open. Harvey was certain that he had not pushed the plunger to blow the hatch. Seawater began sloshing into the craft as it bobbed in the ocean and began to sink. Reacting quickly Harvey remove his helmet and quickly scampered out of the capsule, thankful that he had undone his harness earlier.

The helicopter saw Harvey swim away from the capsule and immediately tried to save the sinking spacecraft and called in the second helicopter to retrieve Harvey.

Harvey suddenly realized he was having trouble staying afloat. His spacesuit had begun to take on water. Desperately he looked around for a swimmer from one of the helicopters to help him tread water. He had a relieving sight when he saw a swimmer from the second helicopter. The helicopter then dropped a horse collar lifeline and Harvey wrapped himself in it rather awkward facing the wrong way. However it didn't really matter as the helicopter was able to pull him up to safety.

Meanwhile the first helicopter was struggling to retrieve the capsule. However it had taken on far too much water and become too heavy for the helicopter to lift and was now pulling the chopper down like an anchor. With engine warning lights blaring the helicopter cut its lines and regained altitude flying back to the rescue carrier.

Afterwards there was an investigation as to what had happened with the hatch blowing off early. Some thought that Harvey had activated the detonator to early, but Harvey denied that and his fellow astronauts all supported him. The activation of the detonator would leave a tell-tale bruise on the right hand but Harvey's post flight medical exam showed no injuries.

Since the capsule had sunk however the mystery would remain for years as to just what had happened.


	5. Chapter 4 - Friendship 7

**Chapter 4 – Friendship 7**

* * *

 _February 20, 1962, Cape Canaveral Florida…_

It had been nearly seven months since Harvey Kinkle's suborbital flight. The development of the more powerful Atlas booster, which was to carry an astronaut into orbit, had been slowed than expected. In that time the Soviets had launched their second cosmonaut, Gherman Titov on August 6, 1961, on a mission that had orbited the earth for twenty-five hours. In respect the American's first attempt at putting a man in orbit was going to be a modest three orbits.

In November the American had successful launched a chimpanzee into orbit, much like they had before Archie Andrews' historic first spaceflight. Unlike that launch however this one had been nearly flawless and there was no need for an extra test flight, the next one would carry the first American astronaut into orbit.

For the mission NASA ended up choosing Reggie Mantle as the prime pilot, and Adam Chisholm was selected as his backup.

Reggie had chosen the name _Friendship 7_ for his capsule; the name was somewhat ironic because while Reggie got along well with the press and with NASA's engineers, he had a tendency to clash with his fellow astronauts largely out of his desire for the fame that he could achieve.

The flight had originally been scheduled for January 16, but had been postponed to January 20 because of issues with the fuel tanks on the Atlas booster. It then was postponed for yet another week because of rather unfavourable winter weather to January 27. On that day Reggie had actually boarded the Mercury capsule when the launch was called off because of thick cloud cover that would have made it impossible to see the rocket after the first 20 seconds or so of flight. The launch was postponed once more, this time for February 1.

On January 30, when technicians began the arduous process of fuelling the Atlas they discovered a fuel like, likely caused by all the delays. It took two weeks to make repairs and the launch was rescheduled for February 14. But once again the launch was postponed because of the weather. However on February 18 the weather began to clear up and now on February 20 the conditions were perfect for launch.

Reggie had boarded _Friendship 7_ just after 7 AM. There had been a slight delay as one of the hatch bolts had broken and had to be replaced. There were a few other holds but nothing looked to cause the launch to be postponed. Finally at 10:45 AM the countdown began being broadcast across the country.

In the blockhouse Reggie's back up, Adam Chisholm was manning the radio, his call of the countdown being heard across the country.

"Main engine start," Adam announced. "Have a good ride all the way. Godspeed Reggie Mantle."

In the capsule though Reggie heard none of this; his radio wasn't set to pick up the frequency that Adam was operating on.

"10… 9… 8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…" Adam counted down.

The clamps holding the Atlas booster to the pad were released and it began to climb into the air.

"It's getting a little bumpy here," Reggie reported about a minute into the flight.

However soon the flight smoothed out and at two minutes and fourteen seconds the attachable boosters fell away and the Atlas continued on with just the center sustainer rocket powering it. Then ten seconds later the escape tower was jettisoned.

With the tower jettisoned the craft pitched over as it arced into orbit giving Reggie his first view of the horizon. The vibration increased as the last of the fuel was used up before the engine cut-off and the rocket began to coast and the vibrations ceased. On the ground the controllers had calculated that the rocket was travelling just 7 ft/s slower than had been predicted. Reggie received word that _Friendship 7_ was in a trajectory that would keep him up for at least 7 orbits on its own and possibly as many as 100.

The posigrade rockets fired moments later separating the Mercury capsule from the spent Atlas rocket. The rate dampening system didn't kick in immediately however and the capsule went into a roll which took 38 seconds to recover from using up almost 10% of his fuel. However finally the ship was in a proper orbit as it travelled at 17,544 miles per hour.

The capsule passed over the Atlantic ocean heading towards Africa, the first land Reggie saw were the Canary Islands. From there he began heading over Africa, noticing a large dust storm occurring in the Sahara desert.

At this point Reggie took over manual control of the craft. Currently he was facing backwards and he made a major yaw adjustment to swing the nose around so that the capsule was facing forward. Reggie noticed that the capsules attitude indicators disagreed with what he could clearly see was the true attitude. None the less Reggie was pleased to be facing forward.

As he passed over the Indian Ocean Reggie observed his first sunset from orbit. He described the sky as being very black with a thin blue band; that the sun set fast but not as quickly as he had anticipated. He then looked down towards the Indian Ocean. A tracking ship had fired a mortar flare as part of an observation experiment; however cloud cover prevented him from seeing it.

He continued onwards heading towards Australia. Soon he was within radio range of the tracking station located there where Jughead Jones was the CAPCOM. Reggie reported that he was feeling fine and had no problems. As he looked down he saw what appeared to be the outline of a city along the coast.

"That's probably Perth," Jughead said.

As he passed over Australia Reggie saw the sun about to rise this time.

"Man that was a short day," Reggie commented. "About the shortest day I've ever run into."

As Reggie continued on over the Pacific and into day light he saw what looked like thousands of tiny brilliant specks outside the capsule. For a moment Reggie though that the capsule had begun to tumble but a quick glance towards the ground and he realized that was not the case. Reggie likened them on his radio to fireflies and as he moved into brighter sunlight they disappeared.

As Reggie passed over Hawaii he noticed that a yaw thruster was causing attitude control problems. The automatic stabilization and control system was letting the spacecraft drift to the right. Reggie switched to manual control and corrected the drift. He then checked the other modes to see which one used the least fuel. About twenty minutes later the yaw thruster seemed to be working again and Reggie turned the automatic control back on. It worked for a short while but then the opposite yaw thruster began to have problems. Reggie switched back to manual control since the automatic system wasn't working.

Reggie passed over Florida as he completed his first orbit. On the ground in the mission control room one of the system controllers noticed that a sensor that provided data on the landing systems was giving a strange reading. It was saying that the heat shield and landing bag were no longer locked in position. If that was the case that meant that the heat shield was only being held on by the straps of the retrorocket package. A message was sent to all the tracking stations to monitor that particular sensor and to advice Reggie that the landing bag deploy switch needed to be kept in the off position.

Reggie continued over the Atlantic to Africa once more. He began to get suspicious when the third tracking station asked him about his landing bag deploy switch being off. As he passed over the Indian Ocean for a second time the ship there tried a second time to fire flares. This time Reggie noticed what looked like lightning inside the clouds, but he couldn't see the flares themselves.

Reggie was noticing that his spacesuit was beginning to get too warm and he attempted to adjust the temperature. As he did so a warning light came on about cabin humidity. Reggie realized he was going to have to balance the two for the rest of his flight.

While he passed over Australia another light came on indicating that fuel had drop to 60%. Mission control advised Reggie to let the ship drift a bit to try and conserve fuel instead of constantly correcting.

The third orbit was not nearly as eventful as the first two. No new problems occurred and Reggie was preoccupied with keeping the capsule on course as well balancing his suit's temperature with the cabin's humidity.

As Reggie passed over Hawaii near the completion of his third orbit, they asked him to put the landing bag deploy switch in the automatic position. If a light came on then re-entry should take place while retaining the retrorocket pack. Reggie quickly realized from the earlier questions that there was concern with the heat shield. When he turned on the switch no light came on and he heard no noises.

On the ground the controllers were trying to decide on a course of action. Signs suggested that perhaps there wasn't an issue with the heat shield just a faulty sensor. However rather than take chances the flight director Waldo Weatherbee decided that the retro pack should remain attached. Betty who was manning the California tracking station relayed the orders to Reggie.

"Great," was his sarcastic response.

Up above Reggie was preparing for re-entry. Not release the retrorocket pack meant he had to do a lot of things manually since disabling the release disabled other automatic controls as well. The retrorockets fired and _Freedom 7_ began to lose altitude as it passed over the continental United States.

The re-entry was a carefully co-ordinated event with ground control. There were too many gauges and dials for Reggie to monitor on his own so he focused simply on the flying aspect letting ground control monitor things for him.

Soon the capsule was beginning it's fiery descent towards the ground. As Reggie looked out the window he saw chunks of debris flying past the window. He initially thought that the heat shield had broken off and was disintegrating. However it turned out to be the retrorockets breaking apart as they burned off. The ship began bouncing about as it fell rocking back and forth, Reggie was wondering if it would be stable enough to deploy the drogue parachute.

At 28,000 feet the drogue chute deployed automatically and the oscillations stopped and the capsule began to fall slowly but steadily. Soon the main parachute deployed and the descent slowed once more. Ground control remind Reggie to deploy the landing bag. Reggie toggled the switch and there was a loud clunk. Shortly thereafter _Freedom 7_ landed in the Atlantic Ocean.

Reggie had ended up landing about 40 miles short of his landing zone. The miscalculation was attributed to not factoring in the loss of weight due to consumables for the retrofire. The destroyer _USS Noa_ however was nearby and observed Reggie's capsule landing. It pulled along the capsule and hoisted it on board. Once safely onboard Reggie blew the hatch injuring his hand as he did.

"It was hot in there," Reggie said as he climbed out.

Reggie was welcomed back to America as a hero. The public had followed his flight with great interest. He was celebrated with a ticker tape parade in New York.

The American had gotten off to a slow start but they were on their way to catching up with the Soviets.


	6. Chapter 5 - Aurora 7

**Chapter 5 – Aurora 7**

* * *

It had been a slow start but the Americans were catching up. They had now launched three men into space while the Soviets had only launched two and they were preparing for their fourth launch.

Frankie Valdez was chosen for the launch originally. However while training in the centrifuge to simulate the g-forces he would experience the medical doctors monitoring him noticed an irregular heartbeat. After a more thorough medical examination Frankie was found to have cardiac arrhythmia which put him at risk of passing out during the flight and meant that he was immediately removed from active flight status. This meant that Frankie's flight, which was to be called _Delta 7_ , was instead flown by his back up Adam Chisholm, who named the capsule _Aurora 7_ instead.

The flight was planned to be quite similar to Reggie Mantle's flight on _Friendship 7_ , just three orbits of the Earth. They had made improvements to the Mercury craft that would hopefully resolve the technical issues that Reggie had experienced and allow Adam to focus on the scientific studies instead of testing the craft.

* * *

 _May 24, 1962, Cape Canaveral, Florida…_

Adam Chisholm was strapped into his seat in _Aurora 7_. Even though this was only the fourth manned launch the United States had attempted there was a bit of a feeling of routine to it all. The lift-off went exactly as according to plan and the performance of the Atlas was perfect with the exception that one of two pressure switches in the center engine tripped for an abort condition, however since an abort would only occur if both tripped there was no issue and Adam was placed into orbit as intended.

One of the first things that Adam did was study liquids in a weightless situation. He was quite fascinated when water formed a large bubble that simply floated in front of his face. The attempt to see a flare fired from the ground was attempted once again but with no success. And Adam engaged in a great deal of photography of the Earth during the daylight portion of his first two orbits.

Another study on the flight was that of food. Adam had been given various freeze-dried foods shaped in cubes. However he found that they produced a lot of crumbs that floated about the cabin when he removed them from their plastic bags and he worried about them clogging the ventilation intakes. The food had been coated with an anti-crumbling agent but Adam suspected that they may have accidently been partially crushed at some point before lift-off.

As a treat he had also been given a chocolate bar. However the high cabin temperature had caused it to melt making it too difficult to eat so Adam decided not to bother with any of the food for the rest of the flight.

On the third orbit there was an issue with the pitch component of the automatic control system when the horizon scanner failed. This forced Adam to take over control of the capsule's pitch but it proved to be only a small issue.

One of the things that was also tested was the appearance of the "fireflies" that Reggie had seen. When he accidentally banged his hand against the side of the capsule Adam noticed that more of the "fireflies" appeared. After banging the side of the capsule a few more times it became clear that the fireflies were something being banged loose from the capsule. Ground control suspected that it was perhaps condensation from the life support system sublimating as it was exposed to the vacuum of space after it was shaken free by Adam's banging.

It soon came time for re-entry. However Adam was distracted watching the fireflies and some of his other experiments. Because the automatic control system was functioning entirely he ended up overshooting his planned re-entry mark, coming down well off course.

Down on the ground the recovery teams were searching frantically, not sure where the astronaut was. After several hours of searching they finally managed to find him two hundred and fifty miles away from where he was supposed to land, floating in his life raft beside his capsule. Other than being slightly exhausted, Adam was found to be in excellent health, with no strange changes or anomalies.

However in a review of the flight NASA were not happy with Adam's performance. He'd become distracted by the fireflies and had ended up needless expending his attitude control fuel which was the main reason as to why he had ended up so far off course for this landing. This put him at the bottom of the list for any future flights and with NASA looking at bringing in more astronauts Adam doubted that he would ever get to fly in space again.

Adam ended up leaving the space program in 1964 and returned to the Navy to take part in its SEALAB program, a program designed to test man's ability to live undersea.


	7. Chapter 6 - Sigma 7

**Chapter 6 – Sigma 7**

* * *

To some it seemed as if America had taken the lead in the space race. Even though the Soviets had launched a man into orbit for a day, they had only launched two men into space while America had launched four. And it had been more than a year since the Soviets had even made a launch.

There were rumours that the Soviets had actually launched other cosmonauts into space but those missions had been unsuccessful so they were covered up. America had no way of confirming whether or not these rumours were true.

Then on August 11, 1962, the Soviets launched another man into space on board Vostok 3. The feat seemed innocuous; it was simply another launch. But then the following day the Soviets launched a second man into space while the other was still in orbit. The general public was awed by the Soviet's accomplishment, however NASA wasn't so impressed. All the Soviets had shown was that they could launch two rockets one after the other. With enough time and planning NASA could do the same. The two ships hadn't even attempted rendezvous. In fact they had been in two different orbits and only came within about four miles of each other and that only lasted briefly. Still it constituted yet another first that the Soviets had beaten the Americans at.

However the Americans weren't concerned. There was just one goal that they wanted to beat the Soviets at, and that was putting a man on the moon. With that very goal in mind they had spent the past year searching for more astronauts to fill the ranks of NASA. On September 17, 1962 NASA introduced its next nine astronauts to the press.

The second group had more civilians this time around with three of them. There were also three Air Force pilots, two navy pilots and one pilot from the Coast Guard. There were also more women with three this time.

The three pilots from the Air Force were, Major Kevin Keller, 34 of Gary, Indiana; Captain Moose Mason, 33 of Chicago, Illinois; and Nick St. Clair, 32 of San Antonio, Texas. From the Navy was, Captain Chuck Clayton, 34 from Cleveland, Ohio, who was also the first African-American astronaut selected; and Alexander Cabot, 35 of Dallas, Texas. The civilian pilots were Veronica Lodge, 32 of Burbank California a test pilot for Lockheed, who father Hiram Lodge was one of the owners; and Cheryl and Jason Blossom from San Diego, California who were both test pilots for Convair, being two of the chief test pilots for the supersonic B-58 Hustler. Lastly was Ginger Lopez, 28, from San Francisco, California, a helicopter pilot from the Coast Guard Reserves. However Lopez also worked as a test pilot for McDonnell having worked alongside Betty; she had been considered for the original group however Betty having a Master's degree over Ginger's Bachelor's degree ended up being the deciding factor between the two.

The media was once again intrigued by the three women that had been selected. At this point Betty had yet to fly in space and they speculated that perhaps one of them would get to be the first woman to fly in space. However NASA soon squashed those speculations as they announced that Betty would be flying on the fifth Mercury flight, which she had named _Sigma 7_.

* * *

 _October 3, 1962, Cape Canaveral Florida…_

Betty sat in the small cramped capsule of _Sigma 7_. She had been awake since 1:40 AM and had been in the capsule since 4:41 AM. It was now 6:24 and the countdown had been delayed because of an issue at one of the tracking stations in the Canary Islands. Six minutes later however countdown resumed and just under two hours later Betty was soaring into the sky on her way to becoming the first woman in space.

About three and a half minutes into the flight Frankie Valdez, who was the CAPCOM in Cape Canaveral came on the radio.

"Are you a turtle today?" he asked Betty.

"I'm going to leave my answer on the on-board voice recorder," Betty replied.

She flicked a switch before saying, "You bet your sweet ass I am."

The turtle question was a recurring joke amongst the Astronauts (except Reggie who felt it was childish), where whenever they were challenged with the question, "are you a turtle today?" the correct response was "You bet your sweet ass I am." Failure to give the correct response resulted in having to buy a round of drinks for all the other astronauts.

Betty had decided to leave her answer on the on-board recorder because she suspected she could have gotten in trouble for letting the public hear it.

The Atlas's boosters ended up cutting off 2 seconds earlier than expected, but the sustainer engine burned 10 seconds longer resulting in Betty ending up in a slightly higher than expected orbit. The initial analysis of the capsules trajectory showed that it was good for at least seven orbits so there would be no need to de-orbit early barring a technical problem.

The capsule separated from the Atlas rocket and Betty slowly stabilized the capsule, doing her best to conserve fuel. She was able to stop it's tumble using only half a percent of the fuel on board a feat that impressed ground control. Betty then began testing the various flight control modes find the manual control setting sluggish and slow compared to the fly by wire mode.

As she passed over Eastern Africa, Betty began to feel overheated, something which was noted by the ground controllers from the medical electrodes attached to her to monitor her vitals. However after a consultation with the flight surgeon Flight Director Weatherbee gave the go ahead to complete the orbit hoping the issue could be stabilized. Betty was able to correct the problem by turning up the cooling setting on her flight suit until it was just below the max setting.

As she passed over Australia they tried once more to see if a flare fired from the ground could be spotted, but once again it was hidden by clouds. Betty was able to see lightning though and the lit outline of the city of Brisbane. As she passed over the Pacific Betty tested the capsule's periscope but found that it was hard to use, and provided a worse view than simply looking out the window. As she passed over Mexico, Betty reported that she was in "chimp mode", a cheeky reference to the earlier flights by chimpanzees that were fully automated.

As she began her second orbit Betty began a yaw maneuver of the craft continue this as she passed into the night section of the orbit she continued practicing the maneuver using the moon as a reference. She also tried using the stars, but it was difficult since the windows on the Mercury capsule weren't big enough to properly make out any constellations. As she travelled across the Pacific she put the spacecraft into automatic control mode once more. As she was passing over the Hawaiian tracking station Betty talked with Harvey Kinkle who was serving as the CAPCOM there about the quality of the manual controls.

As she entered her third orbit Betty turned off the spacecraft's gyroscopes and part of the electrical power system and just let the capsule drift. She took the time to test out her spatial awareness and motor control which she found was unaffected by weightlessness and then she ate a light meal having not eaten since she had entered the capsule. As she passed over the Indian Ocean Betty powered the capsule back up, getting everything back up as she passed over the Pacific. As she passed over Hawaii, Harvey informed her that she was given the go ahead for a six orbit mission. Betty acknowledge this and partially powered the capsule down a second time as she passed over California letting the ship drift once again.

As the fourth orbit began Betty was in an inverted capsule with the Earth "above" her. She occupied herself with photography and Earth observation experiments and as she passed near Africa she attempted to spot the Echo 1 satellite, a large metallic balloon that was used to bounce radio signal off of, but was unable to spot it. A small problem that started to occur during this orbit was that water began condensing on the faceplate of her helmet, likely because of how high she had the cooling setting set to. More concerned with keeping the temperature of her pressure suit stable Betty decided against opening the faceplate to wipe it off, worried that the temperature would rise again.

By the fifth orbit Betty had begun to relax. She used a bungee cord to do a bit of stretching with her arms, which was about the only exercise she could do in the cramped Mercury capsule. As she passed over the Atlantic she continued with her observation and photography before entering night. As she passed over Durban, South Africa there was a large high-powered light for her to spot. Unfortunately cloud cover prevented this, but she was able to make out the city of Port Elizabeth a little further south. As she passed over the Philippines Betty reported on her fuel status, she still had eighty percent of the fuel left. Betty then began the first preparations for the re-entry orbit.

As she was passing over Ecuador she received a message from the tracking station asking her if she had a message in Spanish for the people down there. Betty was annoyed, re-entry was a lot of work and she hated being distracted from it, on top of that she didn't even speak Spanish; she only knew one phrase.

"Buenos Dias," Betty said before returning back to work.

The sixth orbit was focused mostly on preparations for re-entry although Betty was able to take some photographs of South America. She then armed her retrorockets as she reached the western edge of the Pacific and eight hours and fifty-two minutes into her flight she fired her retro rockets. Betty commented on how the automatic control system held the capsule's attitude steady as a rock during the retrorocket firing, but to her dismay had used a quarter of the fuel in the process.

Betty then oriented the capsule for re-entry noting that the attitude control felt a little sloppy and then turned on the rate stabilization control system. This was a new system was designed to try and maintain come semblance of control during re-entry however it used up fuel at a very high rate and Betty was quite annoyed to see the fuel that she had conserved so well during her flight end up being used up so quickly.

The re-entry and landing went smoothly. The drogue chute opened at 40,000 feet and the main chute at 15,000 feet. When _Sigma 7_ finally splashed down in the Pacific Ocean it was only a half-mile away from the _USS Kearsarge_ the aircraft carrier assigned to recover it. A helicopter came from the _Kearsarge_ to help her out but Betty radioed and asked to be towed to the _Kearsarge_. The _Kearsarge_ sent out a whaleboat and they towed the capsule back to the aircraft carrier and lifted it aboard.

Once she was safely onboard the _Kearsarge_ Betty blew the hatch and climbed out to the waiting crowd. After doing this examinations showed large bruises on her hand from using the heavy ejector switch. Betty felt that this was vindication for Harvey Kinkle who was being held responsible by some for the sinking of _Liberty Bell 7_. Betty remained onboard the _Kearsarge_ for three days as the ship made its way to Hawaii undergoing several medical tests.

There were thousands of requests from the media for interviews with Betty after her record flight and she found the fame to be somewhat overwhelming. Not wanting lose who they considering one of their best astronauts NASA did their best to control the interviews and allow her to focus on the space program.

One of the questions she was asked was if she was going to retire and settle down.

"No," Betty replied. "President Kennedy said that we're going to put a man on the moon. Well I'm going to make a small correction to that and we'll put a woman on the moon."


	8. Chapter 7 - Faith 7

**Chapter 7 – Faith 7**

* * *

With the success of Betty's flight on _Sigma 7_ , there were some people at NASA who thought that they should quit while they were ahead and just move on to their next project, the Gemini program. However the heads at NASA felt that they should test the Mercury capsule with a man in space for a full day. The Soviets had already managed to do that and more with their Vostok program. Even before Betty's flight had flown plans were underway to have a Mercury capsule built that would be capable of lasting for a one-day mission.

The capsule was modified with the removal of unnecessary equipment such as the periscope to cut weight that would be used for additional consumables such as more batteries, more oxygen and a redundant set of thrusters.

In November 1962, Forsythe "Jughead" Jones was selected as the pilot for the final Mercury mission with Archie Andrews serving as his back up. Other than Frankie Valdez who had been grounded he was only member who had not flown yet.

The launch was originally scheduled for May 14, 1963 and when Jughead boarded the capsule he found a gift left behind by his backup pilot and go friend Archie. Archie knowing that Jughead would have a urine containment device that he didn't have on his own suborbital flight, (which had forced him to relieve himself directly into his spacesuit and led to an acrid smell that lasted the entire flight) had left behind a toilet plunger for Jughead as a joke with a note attached that read "Remove Before Launch." The plunger did not go into space that day, and neither did Jughead. The engine that rolled the gantry away from the rocket failed to restart and the launch was cancelled till the next day to effect repairs.

The following morning, May 15, 1963, at 8:04 AM Jughead's rocket, with his capsule which he had named _Faith 7_ in honour of the faith all the astronauts placed in the engineers, lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Two minutes and fourteen seconds later the boosters cut off and detached and the booster continued on with just the center rocket motor. Ten seconds later the escape tower was jettisoned.

At approximately the five minute mark the main engine cut out as it ran out of fuel as _Faith 7_ entered orbit travelling at 17,547 miles per hour. The capsule separated from the Atlas booster and Jughead oriented to capsule so he could watch the Atlas booster lag behind and tumble for about eight minute before he lost sight of it.

As he passed over Zanzibar he was informed that his orbit was stable enough that he was good for at least twenty orbits. Nearing the end of his first orbit as he passed over Mexico Jughead was told by Harvey Kinkle, who was serving as CAPCOM, that the ground controllers said the craft's systems were good for at least seven orbits.

After spending the first two orbits checking out the functions of the craft Jughead began working on the list of eleven experiments that he had been given. His first experiment was to release a sphere with xenon strobe lights attached from the nose of the capsule. The experiment was designed to test his ability to spot and track a flashing beacon in orbit, something that would likely be done in an attempted rendezvous. Jughead pushed the button and he heard and felt the beacon detach but he could not spot the flashing light in the approaching dusk. However on the fourth orbit he was able to spot the beacon which was travelling ahead of his, although he wasn't sure how far.

On the sixth orbit Jughead set up some cameras and then set switches to deploy a tethered balloon from the nose of the spacecraft. It was an orange balloon inflated with nitrogen and attached to a one hundred foot long nylon line. A strain gauge would measure the atmospheric drag at the various points of his orbit as he was 100 miles at perigee and 160 miles at apogee. However the balloon failed to eject despite Jughead's repeated attempts.

On his seventh orbit Jughead broke Betty's American record for spaceflight duration while he was doing some radiation experiments. As he passed of Zanzibar they told him he was a go for 17 orbits.

Jughead's scheduled rest period was on orbits 9 through 13. Jughead was a bit of a connoisseur of hamburgers so NASA had provided him with the closest they could manage, which was powdered roast beef mush along with some water. Jughead wasn't particularly tired and as he passed over Asia he took some of the best pictures during the flight including one remarkable picture of Tibet.

During the tenth orbit Jughead set another American first, as he came the first American to sleep in space. He slept intermittently during the next four orbits, waking up often as he passed from night to day and also to adjust his suit temperature which tended to fluctuate between hot and cold.

On his fourteenth orbit Jughead reported on the condition of _Faith 7_. The fuel situation was good with approximately eighty-two percent still remaining and his oxygen supplies were sufficient. On the fifteenth orbit he spent most of the time recalibrating instruments and synchronizing clocks. On the sixteenth orbit Jughead made some minor maneuvers with the capsule so he could get pictures of the zodiacal lights and the night airglow. The pictures ended up being over exposed upon development on the ground but still proved useful.

On the seventeenth orbit as he passed over Cape Canaveral, Jughead began transmitting slow scan black and white television images to Mercury Control. The ghostly image of an astronaut with a helmet and hoses could be seen, the first time that an astronaut had sent back television images from space.

On that orbit and the next, Jughead took infrared weather photos and pictures of moonset. He also resumed doing Geiger counter radiation readings.

It was on the nineteenth orbit that Jughead had his first bit of trouble. The 0.05 g light came on which was an indicator that the spacecraft was re-entering. This was not the case though but rather a faulty indicator. However on the twentieth orbit Jughead lost all attitude readings and as he tried to solve that on the twenty-first orbit he lost all power to the automatic control system when a major electrical component short circuited.

Near the end of the twentieth orbit as he was passing near Japan, Jughead was contacted by Reggie Mantle onboard a tracking ship stationed near there and he helped Jughead prepare a revised checklist for a manually controlled retrofire. Many of the tracking stations weren't in radio contact during the twenty-first orbit but his communications with Zanzibar and Hawaii were good. Near the end of the orbit Jughead was once again in contact with Reggie. Jughead reported that the capsule was in retro attitude and he was holding position manually. Reggie gave him a countdown to retrofire and Jughead kept the capsule aligned until Reggie called out "mark".

Fifteen minutes later Jughead's capsule was spotted descending into the ocean on its parachute just four miles from the recovery ship, the _USS Kearsarge_. Despite the manual the lack of automatic control it was the most accurate of the Mercury landings.

There was talk of flying another three day Mercury mission in October of that year, with Archie Andrews as the pilot. However NASA decided that the Mercury program had fulfilled all of its goals and that any missions of longer duration could be attempted by the Gemini program.


	9. Chapter 8 - Onto Project Gemini

**Chapter 8 – Project Gemini**

* * *

Even before Jughead Jones had been launched on the final Mercury Flight, _Faith 7_ , NASA had already begun working on its next generation of spacecraft. McDonnell Aircraft, the same company that had built the Mercury capsules, was contracted to build the Gemini capsule. The launch vehicle was to be a modified Titan II, an intercontinental missile built by Martin Marietta. The Gemini crew capsule was essentially an enlarged version of the Mercury capsule and was referred to as the Re-entry Module. There was also what was called the Adapter Module, which contained the retrorockets, electrical power, propulsion systems, consumables etc.

The Americans had also begun work on a separate project to go to the moon dubbed Project Apollo. However they knew that this program would take much longer to develop and Gemini and Gemini was an interim program to test various aspects of space flight like rendezvous and docking, extra-vehicular activity (EVA) as well as various types of equipment.

However after the final Mercury flight the Gemini spacecraft was still in the development process and wouldn't be ready to fly with astronauts onboard for nearly two years. In the meantime the Soviets continued their flights launch and in June of 1963 they launched Vostok 5 and Vostok 6 one after another much like they had with Vostok 3 and 4. Onboard Vostok 6 was Valentina Tereshkova, the first Soviet Woman in space. However at this point the Americans were feeling very comfortable about their position in the Space Race. The Soviets were continuing to use the same equipment while the Americans were developing newer and better equipment.

With their space program being expanded in a major way, and with Reggie Mantle leaving to take up a career in politics, and Adam Chisholm joining the Navy's SEALAB program, the Americans realized that they would need even more astronauts than they currently had. They opened up selections and chose another fourteen astronauts to expand the Astronaut Corps, announcing the newest members in October of 1963. The new group consisted of seven men and seven women.

The Air Force provided the largest portion of the new candidates with six of them. They were Raoul Hopper, 33 of Haverford, Pennsylvania; Fletcher Foley, 33 of Columbus, Ohio; Alan Mayberry, 32 who had been born in Rome, Italy and grown up at military bases across American and world; Cedric van Hauten, 31 of Dayton, Ohio. Also from the Air Force Women's Auxiliary Corps were: Trula Twyst, 30 of La Mesa, California; and Cricket O'Dell, 28 of Neptune Township, New Jersey.

The next largest group was from the Navy with three astronauts. They were: Ambrose Pipps, 34 of Seattle, Washington; Eddie Turner, 28 of Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Avalon Priss, 31 of Wheeler, Texas.

There were three female civilian pilots as well. They were: Josie McCoy a test pilot for Ling-Temco-Vought, 31 of San Antonio Texas; Melody Valentine a test pilot for Boeing, 29 of Bellwood, Illinois; and Katy Keene a test pilot for Martin Marietta, 33 of Montclair, New Jersey.

Rounding out the group were two Marines. First was Wilbur Wilkins, 31 of Mobile, Alabama; and Priscilla Periwinkle, who was the first female Marine helicopter pilot, 31 of Creston, Iowa.

* * *

The Americans successfully launched a test flight of the Gemini spacecraft, named Gemini 1 on April 8, 1964. The capsule had been designed specifically for an unmanned flight. In place of certain equipment like life support systems was simply ballast and instead of the seats there was equipment that measured things like vibration, pressure and acceleration to test the structural loads during flight. There were a few minor problems; the Titan II had put the capsule into a slightly higher orbit than expected. There had also been a brief communications black out when the first stage of the Titan II and the second stage had started up. This was later attributed to the charged ions caused by the start-up of the second stage creating a similar condition to that during re-entry when the capsule also experienced a communication blackout.

The capsule was not designed to re-enter. In fact the heat shield had holes drilled into it to ensure its destruction upon re-entry and it remained attached to the second stage of the Titan II booster. While the testing on the capsule only lasted just over four hours, it re-entered just under four days later coming down over the South Atlantic Ocean.

The test flight had given the Americans a great deal of valuable data and they began preparing the first of the manned Gemini capsules for flight.

* * *

Things were going along well for the American when on October 12, 1964 the Soviets launched three men into space in one craft achieving the first flight of a multi-crew space craft with Voskhod 1. Once again the world was awed by the Soviets feat and NASA was wondering if perhaps the Soviets were further along than they thought.

However as some details came back to them NASA wasn't so worried. Voskhod 1 was merely a modified Vostok capsule that had the ejection seat removed to cram three men in, and none of them had worn spacesuits, a very risky proposition in NASA's opinion. As far as NASA was concerned it was simply the Soviets using old technology to accomplish something first and it meant little. They continued forward with their own development feeling confident with their approach and were content to let the Soviets take the glory for now.

* * *

 _October 31, 1964, Cape Canaveral Air Force Base…_

New astronaut Raoul Hopper was flying back from the McDonnell-Douglas training facilities in St. Louis, Missouri. Raoul was planning to take his three and a half-year old daughter Faith out trick or treating for the first time.

Raoul was flying a NASA modified T-38 Talon jet trainer, a craft all of the astronauts were comfortable flying and had ready access to and Raoul as an Air Force pilot had flown hundreds of hours in one before he even joined NASA.

As Raoul was on final approach to landing a flock of geese suddenly took off from near the runway. One goose was sucked into the port-side air intake of causing immediate engine failure. With the sudden loss of power so close to the ground the plane suddenly stalled and with no room to recover it pancaked into the ground immediately and violently breaking apart before bursting into flames. Raoul had no time to eject, but his plane was too close to the ground to safely eject in any case.

Raoul's wife ended up finding out about her husband's death when a reporter arrived at her house to ask her for a comment. This resulted in a policy by NASA to ensure that another astronaut informs the family of a death as quickly as possible should an incident like this ever occur again.

The other astronauts were all obviously shaken up by the event. Raoul had not been selected for any flight yet, but he had done the basic training with them and had become friends with many. They all knew that what they were doing came with risks; however it was surprising that Raoul had died during a routine flight. It just brought home the dangers of their career.

* * *

On January 19, 1965 the American launched their second test of the Gemini capsule on a mission called Gemini 2. This launch was simply a sub-orbital launch designed to test both the Titan II and the Gemini capsule's heat shield.

The mission had initially been planned for late August, early September of 1964, however Hurricane Cleo and Hurricane Dora caused postponement of the launch. In November they used the capsule for a practice count down of an actual manned launch.

December 9, 1964 had been scheduled for launch. On that day countdown had reached zero and the engines had been ignited, but they had shut down a second later due to a loss of hydraulic pressure. The cause of the issue had been discovered and repaired and when the second attempt was attempted on January 19, 1965 the Titan II lifted off properly.

Moments after launch the Mission Control Center experienced a power outage, which was later attributed to an overload of the electrical system by all the television tracking equipment. Control of the mission was differed to an off-shore tracking ship.

Gemini 2 flew a ballistic arc out over the Atlantic similar to the ones that Archie Andrews and Harvey Kinkle had flown on their Mercury flights. The capsule came down about 14 miles away from the planned splashdown zone and was eventually recovered by the _USS Lake Champlain_. Nearly all the goals of the flight were accomplished. The only problems were that the new fuel cells, which were supposed to provide power, failed before lift-off so they had been shut off and flight flown on battery power. The other problem was an issue with the spacecraft's cooling system which had a temperature that would be too high for prolonged flight. Everything else however functioned as expected. With the success of Gemini 2 the Gemini program was ready for the first manned flight onboard Gemini 3.

However the Soviets weren't done in accomplishing firsts.

* * *

On March 18, 1965, the Soviets launched Voskhod 2. Like Voskhod 1 before it this was simply a modified Vostok capsule. However this one only held two cosmonauts which allowed them to wear spacesuits. Something that was necessary because Voskhod 2 also had an inflatable airlock. On this flight cosmonaut Alexey Leonov climbed out the airlock and became the first man to "walk in space".

Once again the public was awed by the display. Little did they know that Leonov had come extremely close to death during the spacewalk. His spacesuit had stiffened up so much that it had been extremely difficult to get back in the airlock and onto the spacecraft. He had nearly suffered both heat stroke and decompression sickness from the effort. However the Soviets kept this covered up from the rest of the world and just trumpeted their triumph.

The Americans were a little annoyed that the Soviets had beaten them at something once again. But they were confident still that they were gaining on the Soviets and would win the race to the moon in the end.


	10. Chapter 9 - Gemini III

**Chapter 9 – Gemini 3**

* * *

 _March 23, 1965, Cape Kennedy…_

The crew of Gemini 3, the first manned flight of the Gemini Program, made their way to the elevator that would carry them to the capsule, attached atop its Titan II rocket.

The crew consisted of Harvey Kinkle the commander of the flight and Ginger Lopez. The original crew for this flight had been Archie Andrews and Jason Blossom. However in November of 1964, Archie had been diagnosed with Meniere's Disease, a condition where fluid builds up in the inner ear; it caused bouts of nausea, disorientation and dizziness. NASA had no choice but to remove Archie from flight status and they gave the flight to the original backup crew of Harvey and Ginger. Jason was relegated to the backup crew while Betty took Archie's place as backup commander.

Frankie Valdez, who had been grounded himself three years ago had been made the Director of Flight Crew Operation, where he oversaw recruitment, training and crew selection for the missions. Archie was made the Chief Astronaut which basically made him Frankie's deputy.

Harvey and Ginger were sitting in their seats with their backs to ground as the countdown began. At 10:24 AM the Titan II rocket lifted off. Inside the cockpit of the Gemini capsule neither astronaut was even aware that they had begun to rise into the air the flight was so smooth. However soon they were both pressed back into their seats as the rocket accelerated into the sky.

Two and a half minutes in the first stage engines cut off and the two astronauts lurched forward as the acceleration suddenly stopped, both of them had known it would happen but were still caught off guard.

"Didn't have that on my first flight," Harvey commented to Ginger.

A second later the second stage engine ignited and the two astronauts were pressed back into their seats as they began accelerating towards space once more. The rocket began to pitch downwards as it entered orbit and the second stage took over the steering of the craft.

Five and a half minutes into the flight the second stage engines shut down. There was a loud pop as the pyrotechnic charges separated the Gemini capsule from the second stage.

"Damn, that was like a howitzer going off!" Ginger exclaimed.

Harvey just chuckled at his rookie co-pilot's comment before he fired the Gemini capsule's thrusters to push it into its final orbit. In the end he ended up putting the Gemini very close to the intended orbit with an 87 miles by 121 miles elliptical orbit.

Harvey and Ginger began checking systems making sure that everything was correct. They were about twenty minutes into their flight when Ginger noticed a drop in the oxygen pressure in the environmental control system.

"Oxygen pressure is showing low," Ginger commented.

"What about everything else?" Harvey asked as he continued checking his own gauges.

Ginger glanced and noticed that several of the other gauges were showing strange readings. Her electrical engineering degree let her know that it was probably from a problem with the instrument panel's power supply rather than issues with the systems. She flipped a switch change the power from the primary to the secondary power unit and the problems instantly vanished.

"Well that solves that," Ginger said happily.

On his side of the capsule Harvey had an experiment that used sea urchin eggs to study their development in a weightless condition. It was a simply design that simply required him to turn a lever at timed intervals. However the first time he turned the lever it broke off in his hand rendering the experiment useless. On her side Ginger had another experiment that involved blood samples and radiation and was similarly activated with a simple lever. Her lever did not break off although it did seem to stick a little.

Near the end of their first orbit as they were passing over Texas, Harvey fired the capsules Orbit Attitude and Maneuvering System (OAMS) for one minute and fourteen seconds. This slowed capsule down and moved it from its 87 by 121 mile elliptical orbit into an 85 by 91 mile near circular orbit. This was the first time that a manned space craft had made any kind of orbital maneuver.

On the second orbit the two astronauts ate some of the pre-packaged food that NASA was testing. It was rather bland and didn't even look like food having been made into paste or small cubes. But then Ginger reached into the pocket of her flight suit and revealed an egg salad sandwich that she had smuggled onboard.

"Oh my gosh where did you get that?" Harvey asked.

"Betty gave it to me," Ginger replied.

While all the astronauts were friends with each other, Betty and Ginger had known each other for a while and were quite close and Betty knew that egg salad was Ginger's favourite. Betty had smuggled it into the White Room where the astronauts got dressed in their spacesuits. As part of the backup crew Betty assisted with getting the astronauts ready. She had discreetly tucked the sandwich into Ginger's pocket just before they made their way out of the White Room.

Ginger handed the sandwich to Harvey and he took a few bites.

"Mmm, that is much better than NASA's cooking," Harvey joked hanging it back to Ginger.

Ginger took a few bites herself.

"That is good," she agreed.

They quickly stowed the sandwich though lest the crumbs get into the instruments and cause a short circuit.

Over the course of the flight Harvey and Ginger made two more orbital correction burns each time bringing their orbit a little bit lower.

After just three orbits they were ready to re-enter. They separated the Adapter Module and fired the retrorockets and soon were descending towards Earth.

When the parachutes deployed during the descent the capsule suddenly swung rather violently from a vertical position to a horizontal one. The movement was so abrupt that both astronauts banged their helmets against the control panels in front of them. Harvey's faceplate was actually cracked while Ginger's only suffered a scratch.

When the capsule finally splashed down it was 45 miles short of its intended target. This was determined be an engineering error and not any fault of the astronauts. Harvey and Ginger decided to stay in the capsule, not wanting to open the hatch before a recovery ship arrived. They ended up spending an uncomfortable half hour in a spacecraft that was not designed to be a boat and both felt the effects of seasickness as it bobbed in the waves.

When the recovery swimmers finally arrived both Harvey and Ginger were quite eager to get out of the capsule and onto the helicopter.

Post flight it was ended up being revealed that the two of them had eaten a contraband sandwich on the flight. The story ended up in front of congress where lawmakers who were opposed to the space program made a fuss over astronauts not following rules and needlessly endangering expensive equipment. It ended up resulting in a rule stating that "Non man-rated egg salad sandwiches, and any other food like it, were out for future space missions."

But overall the flight was a success. The Gemini capsule had worked almost perfectly and the problem with the power supply was discovered and would be corrected on the next flight. The faceplates of the helmets which were made of acrylic would be made with polycarbonate plastic on subsequent flights to make them less likely to crack.

* * *

 _Author's note: On the actually Gemini 3, John Young smuggled on board a corned beef sandwich courtesy of Walter Schirra. He was reprimanded for this but not excluded from any future flights._


	11. Chapter 10 - Gemini IV

**Chapter 10 – Gemini** **IV**

* * *

Following the success of Gemini 3 the Americans were prepared to launch Gemini 4. Gemini 4 was rather ambitious in its goals compared to all previous American spaceflights. Not only was it a four day long mission, which was four times longer than anything the Americans had previously attempted, but also would feature the first American extra vehicular activity, or spacewalk as the press had decided to name it.

The crew selected for this mission was Moose Mason and Nick St. Clair. The two had been chosen because they were the two most physically fit of the astronauts and NASA wasn't sure what sort of effect extended spaceflight would have nor what sort of difficulties could occur during the spacewalk (the Soviets hadn't shared any of their experiences) so they wanted to send up two of their most fit astronauts just in case. Moose was the commander of the flight and Nick the pilot so Nick would be the one to do the spacewalk. There was also some speculation by the press that NASA didn't want to send up a woman on this flight in case something went wrong, this came from the fact that the backup crew was Kevin Keller and Chuck Clayton.

* * *

 _June 3, 1965, Cape Kennedy…_

The Gemini 4 capsule sat atop its Titan II booster. Strapped inside were Moose Mason and Nick St. Clair. The flight was to be the first one controlled from the new Mission Control Center located in nearby Riverdale, Florida. The small town had grown immensely since the start of the space program growing from a tiny little hamlet of not even one thousand to a large town of over ten thousand as it had been built up to accommodate all the various scientists and engineers who worked for NASA.

The launch itself was an historic one; for the first time it was to be broadcast live to an international audience. Just two months early Intelsat I, nicknamed Early Bird, had been launched. This was the first ever commercial communications satellite and the interest proved to be so high that some of the astronauts had to open up their homes to some of the journalists.

At 11:15 AM local time the Titan II's engines roared to life and in slowly lifted away from the launch pad. About a minute in the rocket experienced a few moments of pogo oscillation which jolted Moose and Nick back and forth in their seats. However it quickly subsided and a minute later the first stage burned itself out and then the second stage ignited. Five minutes into the flight the Gemini capsule separated from the second stage as it entered orbit.

The first objective was for Gemini to attempt to rendezvous with the spent second stage. There was no attempt to dock since the second stage wasn't designed for that, but the need to learn about just the proper approach techniques would be critical for a moon landing.

Moose turned the capsule towards the rocket and used the thruster to try and approach. However he found himself moving away and downwards. It would be learned afterwards that in doing so Moose was actually slowing his own craft down in orbit which caused it to drop into a lower orbit. It was made more difficult by the fact that the Titan II second stage only had two running lights on it, and it was venting its residual propellant which was causing it to tumble and move about somewhat randomly. Also the Gemini 4 capsule did not have radar so it was difficult to gauge the distance to the second stage. Moose and Nick could not agree on how far away it was.

After using up nearly half his thruster fuel Moose gave up in frustration. The more important goal of the mission was the EVA and more precise rendezvous was the goal of some of the later missions.

The EVA was originally scheduled to start on the second orbit, however Moose noticed that after the long stretch of being strapped into the Titan prior to launch and the somewhat rough launch that Nick was looking somewhat tired and he himself was feeling somewhat mentally fatigued after the frustrating rendezvous attempt. They took time to rest, waiting until the third orbit to begin the Rendezvous.

As the capsule passed over Australia they began to depressurize the cabin and as they passed over Hawaii, Nick went to open the hatch but the latches failed to move. However Moose knew what the problem was, a spring had failed to compress and he was able to help Nick get the hatch open.

Tied to a tether Nick floated out of the capsule and became the first American to walk in space. Using a Hand-Held Maneuvering Unit (HHMU), which had been informally nicknamed the zip gun, Nick floated out of the capsule. The zip gun expelled pressurized oxygen to help Nick maneuver around. The zip gun also had a camera attached to it which Nick used to take pictures.

Nick experimented with maneuvering using the zip gun. He found it easy to mimic pitch and yaw motions but before he could experiment with roll motion, the gun ran out of gas. Nick then focused on taking pictures as he simply floated around outside the spacecraft.

Meanwhile Moose was standing in the hatch taking pictures. Moose was taking pictures of Nick as he floated around and was ready to pull Nick in by the tether if need be. While Nick was outside the capsule he was unable to communicate with the ground which meant Moose also needed to relay any messages from the ground to him. However Moose's head set had its own issue there were two modes, push-to-talk and voice-operated switch (known as VOX which turned on whenever the wearer spoke). However a glitch with his headset meant that he was unable to hear Mission Control whenever his headset was in the VOX setting, although they could hear him.

Down on the ground Mission Control was desperately trying to get in contact with Gemini 4. There were time constraints on Nick's EVA. One was that the tracking signal from the Bermuda station was about to be lost and second was that the capsule was about to cross the solar terminator into darkness and they did not want the EVA being performed in darkness.

After a while Moose realized he wasn't hearing anything from Mission Control and he switched his headset from VOX to Push-to-Talk.

"Hey Harvey, this is Moose. Got any messages for us?" Moose asked.

Down on the ground Harvey Kinkle was serving as the CAPCOM.

"Yeah, the flight director says get back in now!" Harvey responded.

"Okay," Moose said. "Hey Nick they want you come back in now."

"But I've still got film left to take pictures," Nick protested.

"No you really should come in now," Moose said. "We're almost in darkness."

Rather reluctantly Nick began pulling himself back to the hatch by the tether and climbed back inside.

"It's the saddest moment of my life," Nick commented as he got into his seat.

By the time Nick was in the capsule had entered darkness, the only light came from the ones inside the capsule. The hatch proved as difficult to close as it had been to open. If they were unable to close it then there was no way they could survive re-entry. However Moose was once again able to solve the problem and the hatch was closed and latched.

The mission called for discarding Nick's used EVA equipment by opening the hatch and throwing it out. However as commander of the mission Moose decided not to do this since the hatch was proving so difficult to open.

With the EVA over they powered down the spacecraft's maneuvering system, intending to drift for the next two and a half days and to conserve their remaining fuel which had been greatly used up in the rendezvous attempt.

The intention was for them to sleep in alternating four hour intervals. This ended up proving to be rather difficult with the constant radio contact and the cramped confines of the cabin which was about the same as sitting in the front seat of a car.

During the next days they conducted several experiments. There were dosimeters onboard that they used to measure the radiation levels inside and outside the spacecraft. Of particular interest during this experiment was when they passed through and area of the Van Allen radiation belt called the South Atlantic Anomaly where the Earth's magnetic field was its weakest.

Another experiment involved attempting to navigate using a sextant. Both of them agreed that it would likely prove useful on a journey to the moon. They also took hundreds of photos of weather and the terrain with high quality cameras.

There were also several medical experiments on the mission. Both of the astronauts had phonocardiogram sensors attached to their bodies to measure their heartbeats throughout the flight. They also had a bungee cord that they used for a resistance exercise. Both Moose and Nick found that it was harder to pull the bungee cord as the flight went on, although whether this was a result of prolonged weightlessness or a lack of sleep, or a combination was difficult to determine.

On the forty-eighth orbit the Gemini's computer was updated during a pass over the United States. Moose was told to turn the computer off. He flipped the switch and found that it would not turn off. Over the next couple orbits Moose and Nick both tried several different attempts to fix the problem with the computer but then it just quit completely. The failure of the computer that meant that the Gemini capsule would have to do a simpler and less accurate manual re-entry rather than a more accurate one that the computer had been designed to assist with.

The computer failure was particularly embarrassing for IBM who had built the computer. IBM had put an advertisement out stating that their computers were so reliable that even NASA used them.

On the sixty-second orbit Moose and Nick began their re-entry. They detached the adapter module and as they began their re-entry they watched as it burned up as it followed them back down to earth.

Moose and Nick had suspected that because they were doing a manual re-entry the capsule would come down short of its intended landing zone. However the recovery ships had expected this and began to move to the new expected landing zone and in fact one helicopter crew saw the Gemini capsule descending on its main parachute. Only a few minutes after landing swimmers were in the water and attached a flotation collar around the capsule and then the two astronauts were both lifted into the helicopter. Less than an hour after splashing down Moose and Nick stepped out of the helicopter onto a red carpet onboard the aircraft carrier _Wasp_ to an ovation by the ship's crew.

Post flight medical exams showed that while both men had lost some weight they were otherwise healthy. And the weight loss had been expected since been in the capsule for so long was similar to being bed ridden. However it meant that future Gemini missions would be able to attempt longer missions.

The success of Gemini 4 provided excitement amongst some less exciting news in America. The same day it had landed June 7, 1965, America had also announced that it would be sending its own troops to fight beside the South Vietnamese in the Vietnam War. This was the start of the space program and the Vietnam War competing with each other for public attention, and later for funding.


	12. Chapter 11 - Gemini V

**Chapter 11 – Gemini** **V**

* * *

Gemini 4 hadn't been a perfect flight but the problems that it had encountered could be corrected and the Americans were sure that they could safely double the duration of the mission for Gemini 5 to eight days.

Gemini 5 was also designed to test out new equipment. A journey to the moon was going to last at least eight days, however battery technology was unable to provide the power required to support a mission of that duration. Two options had been given, one was solar photovoltaic cells; however NASA wasn't sure if these would be able to provide the large amount of power required and were worried about if the craft ended up in darkness. The other option was a technology called a fuel cell. The fuel worked by combining hydrogen and oxygen gas together to form water. The idea of combining both the creation of water and generating power together seemed to be ideal and could also have the added advantage of saving weight compared to the solar cells as quite a few of them would be needed to make the required power compared to what a fuel cell could do. The only limitation on a fuel cell's ability to generate power was how much gas the spacecraft carried.

The crew selected for this flight were Jughead Jones and Veronica Lodge with their backups being Cheryl Blossom and Alexander Cabot. Some issues arose during training; Jughead felt that because he had already been into space once that he didn't need to put in the same amount of training as his co-pilot and back-up crew. While Veronica and his backups didn't complain they were not exactly happy with his lax attitude towards training, and it didn't sit well with the higher ups in NASA either. Director of Flight Crew Operations Frankie Valdez and Chief Astronaut Archie Andrews who had both been selected as the first astronauts along with Jughead were particularly unhappy with his attitude. They had both been grounded for medical reasons and would have done anything to have gotten the chance to fly this mission, and they found Jughead's penchant towards not training to be disrespectful. However from a public relations perspective it would be difficult to remove him from the flight, but that didn't mean that Frankie had to assign him to another flight.

* * *

 _August 21, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

It was 9:00 AM and Jughead and Veronica were strapped into their Gemini capsule as the Titan II booster roared to life and lifted them off the launch pad. The launch started out smoothly but then there were a few jolting seconds of pogo oscillations. (This was later determined to be caused by an incorrect amount of pressurized nitrogen in the oxidizer system and wouldn't happen on subsequent flights)

Of concern on this flight was the supply of oxygen and hydrogen for the fuel cell. Ground tests had suggested they had more than enough however Jughead planned to run the fuel cells at a low pressure to conserve the fuels just in case. However Veronica noticed that the pressure was lower than expected. Ground control suggested turning on the oxygen tanks heater to raise the pressure, but to Veronica's surprise it didn't move, although she thought perhaps it would just take time to warm up.

Just over two hours into the flight, Jughead yawed the capsule to the right and unleashed a device called the Radar Evaluation Pod. The purpose of the device was to test the radar of the Gemini capsule and to practice rendezvous with. The radar on the Gemini capsule showed that the pod was moving away at a relative speed of two meters per second.

At about the four and a half hour mark the pressure in the fuel cells still was low. Gemini 5 was out of communication range with the ground at this point so Jughead made the call to shut the fuel cells down, afraid that they might stop working altogether or perhaps something worse might happen. When they came into radio range Jughead reported the situation to ground control.

Down in the Mission Control Center in Riverdale, Flight Director Waldo Weatherbee now had his first major problem to deal with. He knew that the Gemini capsule had enough battery power for a re-entry but what he needed to know was if it had enough power to last until it was in a position where it could come down in an area at least relatively close to recovery ships.

While NASA engineers at Mission Control worked on the power situation, engineers at the McDonnell facility in St. Louis where the Gemini capsules were constructed began a test to see what was the lowest pressure that a fuel cell could be operated at.

At about the six hour mark of the flight the engineers told Weatherbee that batteries were good for thirteen hours and McDonnell reported that low-pressure tests with the fuel cell in St. Louis were looking promising. With these facts Weatherbee told Jughead and Veronica that they were good for at least a one day mission.

Shortly thereafter the next shift's flight director, Director Geraldine Grundy came on duty. Her team had been working with astronaut Katy Keene. Since being selected as an astronaut Katy had earned her PhD in orbital mechanics and she had come up a scheme where the crew of Gemini 5 could perform a rendezvous with a phantom target, since the Radar Evaluation Pod was no longer an option.

Grundy told Jughead and Veronica that they could turn the fuel cells back on and that it was safe to operate them at the low pressure. The two crew members gradually tested the system by increasing its power demands until they were confident that it could operate the space craft.

It had been a nervous first day in orbit but with the spacecraft finally working properly Jughead and Veronica decided to get some rest. They at first tried the alternate sleep periods like Moose Mason and Nick St. Clair had done on Gemini 4, but found that the radio contact with the awake astronaut always woke up the sleeping astronaut. They decided instead to sleep simultaneously.

As the capsule drifted through orbit the capsule began to grow cold. This was the opposite of Jughead's Mercury flight where the capsule tended to overheat. On top of that the view of the stars tumbling by through the windows was disorienting so they decided to cover the windows.

During the second day they spent much of their time taking photographs of both the earth and the stars for various experiments. Veronica also wore a pair of inflatable leg cuffs which would inflate for two minutes out of every six. This experiment was to see if it assisted with maintain circulation or not. They also did the same bungee cord exercise that the crew of Gemini 4 had done.

The third day was when they attempt the phantom rendezvous, as Keene and other NASA scientists had work out the details of the maneuvers. They did four different types of maneuvers, an apogee adjust, a phase adjust, a plane change and a co-elliptical maneuver. All four maneuvers went perfectly.

The following day another problem arose with the fuel cells. The flight controllers found that they were producing water that was not suitable for drinking as it was too acidic in a high quantity than expected. It was known that the fuel cells would make water as well as an acidic discharge from the chemical reaction, but it was making twenty percent more of the acidic discharge than excepted. The two fluids were discharged from the fuel cell into one tank separated by a rubber bladder. An analysis by the ground crew showed that there was more than enough room even with the high rate of production.

On the fifth day another problem arose as the maneuvering system started to react sluggish and then one of the thruster clusters just stopped working altogether. Jughead and Veronica tried several different solutions given to them by the ground to try and fix the problem but none were successful. So Jughead and Veronica simply drifted through their sleep period only to awaken on day six to find that yet another of the thruster clusters had stopped working. Jughead decided to just turn the whole system off and only turned it on to stop excessive tumbling. This meant that they were able to properly do any of their photography experiments for the rest of the flight and they simply drifted for the next two days with little to do. Veronica lamented the boredom wishing that she had brought something to read.

On the eighth day they prepared for re-entry. As they were passing over Hawaii in darkness the retrorockets were fired and Gemini 5 began its re-entry. Because they were in darkness at the time they had to rely entirely on the instruments and the flight computer. Embarrassed by the problem with their computer on Gemini 4, IBM had put a great deal of care into the computer on Gemini 5.

The capsule ended up coming down 130 kilometer short of its intended landing point, in perhaps the gentlest landing yet. There was a thought that the computer had failed again causing the capsule to come down short, however a post flight examination discovered that it was actually a programming error. The Earth's rotation is in fact 360.98 degree per day but the computer had been programmed without the two decimal place numbers.

Navy helicopters soon arrived over the capsule and took the two astronauts on board taking them back to the _USS Lake Champlain_. The recovery of Gemini 5 would prove to be the final mission of the _Lake Champlain_. After the mission it went to the Philadelphia Navy Yard where it began the decommissioning process.

Medical tests on Jughead and Veronica showed no major health issues as a result of their long space flight and Gemini 7 was given the go ahead for a fourteen day flight. The pair now also held the endurance record for the longest spaceflight. The Soviet meanwhile had no launched any men into space since Vostok 2 and it seemed as though the Americans were now taking the lead in the space race.


	13. Chapter 12 - Gemini VI & Gemini VII

**Chapter 12 – Gemini** **VI** ** & Gemini ****VII**

* * *

The rendezvous maneuvers attempted by Gemini 5 had been a success, but the true test would come from actually attempting docking with an actual target. This was the goal of Gemini 6. Betty Cooper and her co-pilot Jason Blossom were chosen as the crew for the mission with Harvey Kinkle and Ginger Lopez serving as the backup crew.

The plan for the mission was to launch an Atlas booster with an Agena upper stage that had been modified for use as a docking target called the Agena Target Vehicle or ATV. Gemini 6 would dock with the ATV four times in the first day of the mission.

* * *

 _October 25, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Betty Cooper and Jason Blossom were strapped into their Gemini capsule prepared for launch as their Titan II booster sat on the pad at Launch Complex 19. Nearby at Launch Complex 14 the Atlas-Agena target vehicle was launched.

The Atlas booster took off successfully flying upwards steadily for six minutes until the Atlas' fuel ran out. The Agena's separated from the Atlas but as soon as its engine fired it telemetry from the Agena was lost. A catastrophic failure of some sort had caused the rocket to explode and the Range safety tracked dozens of pieces of falling debris plummeting towards the Atlantic Ocean.

There was some debate amongst the flight directors as to what to do and after about fifty minutes the launch of Gemini 6 was cancelled.

NASA began an investigation to try and figure out what had happened with the Agena. It was eventually determined that the problem was that a modification to the Agena to allow it to be re-fired multiple times actually caused it to back fire which is what had caused the explosion. Unfortunately it would take time for another ATV to be built.

NASA came up with another plan. They decided to launch Gemini 6 eight days after the launch of Gemini 7 which was planned to be a fourteen day mission and use Gemini 7 as the target vehicle. They wouldn't be able to dock but they could properly practice rendezvous.

The crew for Gemini 7 was Kevin Keller and Chuck Clayton, with Nick St. Clair and Alan Mayberry serving as their backups. It was suggested that an EVA be performed where Jason and Chuck switch places, however Kevin objected to this since it would require he and Chuck to were the cumbersome EVA suits in the cramped cabin of the Gemini capsule for such a long period of time and for what seemed to be little benefit. In the end NASA decided not to do the EVA.

* * *

 _December 4, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Kevin Keller and Chuck Clayton were in their Gemini capsule a top its Titan II booster listening to the countdown. At 3:30 PM they lifted off and began their journey into orbit. The launch was rather smooth with only a brief moment of Pogo oscillation but it was so slight that Chuck didn't even feel it and Kevin thought it was just a bit more vibration.

Once they had separated from the second stage Kevin turned the capsule around and began to station keep with the spent rocket stage. Unlike on Gemini 4, Kevin was able to successfully fly in formation with the upper stage. However Kevin decided to call it off as he felt that too much fuel was being used and the upper stage was tumbling and moving erratically as it vented the last of its fuel.

They spent the rest of the first day doing some experiments and eating their first meal. Unlike on previous missions this time from the start it had been decided that the two astronauts would both sleep at the same time and they were both able to get some sleep. They were awoken the next day with music and the given the morning news which included a story of two airliners colliding just outside of New York City.

Then for the first time in a spaceflight the ground controllers let one of the astronauts take off his spacesuit. On this flight both astronauts were wearing a new lightweight spacesuit design called the G5C, which was proving to be hot and uncomfortable in the cramped quarters. The plan had originally been for both of them to take off their suits but did not like the idea wanting one of them to be suited at all times.

Kevin decided that Chuck should take his suit off since he was the larger of the two and seemed to be feeling more uncomfortable. Later on the flight controllers told Chuck to put his suit on and Kevin to take his off. This was because the doctors wanted to see the effects of being suited to being unsuited. Finally, with advice from the doctors, the NASA managers decided that both astronauts could take their suits off as there was little benefit to keeping them on and having them removed greatly improved the astronauts' comfort and mobility inside the cramped Gemini capsule.

From the lessons learned from Gemini 5, Kevin and Chuck were able to improve their hygiene from that mission. Both of them had used an anti-dandruff shampoo extensively for the two weeks prior to the flight to curb the problem that Jughead and Veronica had experienced with skin flakes accumulating in the spacecraft. Removing their suits also helped stop their skin from drying out so much and they were provided with sanitation wipes which proved highly beneficial in keeping clean.

However life in the capsule wasn't all pleasant. The food rations weren't great and they found the packaging was difficult to open. Also as part of the in-flight medical experiments they were required to collect some of their bodily wastes for post-flight analysis. Needless to say it was a task that both of them found to be unpleasant. The urine collection device in particular they found difficult to use as it had a tendency to leak urine. Kevin suggested a tube and valve device which could be used to simply release the urine into space, an idea that would be used on the later Apollo spacecraft. They also found it rather tedious to have to record every use of the drinking water and suggested just using the meter on the water house to gauge how much they were consuming.

By the fifth day they had completed a series of orbital adjustments that put them into a circular 162 mile orbit. The idea behind this was that it would stable and ideal for a passive target during a space rendezvous.

They spent the next few days waiting for Gemini 6 to be launched for the rendezvous attempt.

* * *

 _December 12, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Betty Cooper and Jason Blossom were in their Gemini capsule once more ready for launch. This time they didn't need to worry about their launch being aborted because of an Agena exploding. The countdown commenced and the Titan II's engines ignited. But after just a second and a half of operation they suddenly shut off. Betty and Jason both looked at each other in confusion.

The clock had started and mission protocol dictated that Betty was to pull the D-ring above the center console that activated the ejection seats. But Betty hadn't felt the rocket move at all and ejecting from a rocket sitting on the pad could have been dangerous so she did nothing.

T he area around the pad was filled with noxious orange smoke and the launch crew had to wait forty minutes for it to clear before they could secure the booster and roll the service tower up. Betty and Jason got out and the booster was taken down to the vehicle assembly building to be examined.

They found the main culprit almost immediately, one of the electrical plugs had dropped out of the booster prematurely and testing showed that some of the plugs came lose easier than others. The plugs were quickly replaced with other ones that would not come loose too easily. However the plugs were only one of the problems. The telemetry showed that the Titan II had actually showed thrust decay before the plug dropped out early aborting the launch. Engineers spent the night trying to figure out what could have been the issue. It took most of the night but eventually the problem was found; a plastic dust cover had been left inside the rocket disrupting the flow of fuel. The cover was removed an the Titan II was cleared for another launch attempt.

* * *

 _December 15, 1965, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Betty and Jason were in their capsule for a third time, waiting to be launched into space.

"Third time's the charm, right?" Jason asked Betty as they listened to the count down.

"Let's hope so," Betty replied.

The Titan II's engines roared to life and at 8:37 AM they lifted off towards orbit and six minutes later their space craft was in a 100 by 161 mile elliptical orbit.

The flight plan called for rendezvous with Gemini 7 to take place on the fourth orbit. Just after the first orbit Betty made the first burn to increase the speed of the capsule by about 16 feet per second. Because they were in a lower orbit Gemini 6 was gaining on Gemini 7 and they were around 730 miles behind. They made a second burn just over two hours into the flight which put them into the same orbital inclination as Gemini 7 and now they were only 300 miles behind.

Gemini 6's radar first made contact with Gemini 7 when they were 270 miles away. Betty switched over to the ships computer and let it take charge of the rendezvous. After a couple more burns Gemini 6 was now within 130 feet of Gemini 7. Gemini 6 still had plenty of fuel remaining meaning that they would be able to do several fly-arounds.

Betty switched the radio to the frequency that Gemini 7 was using.

"Hey there Seven," she greeted them. "How's it going?"

On board Gemini 7 Kevin and Chuck were still facing the other direction and had not yet seen Gemini 6, however they knew from radio traffic that Gemini 6 had been getting close.

"It's a little dull over here," Kevin replied. "But we're ready for the rendezvous maneuvers."

"Well you just hold it steady on your end and let me do all the work," Betty said.

"Copy that," Kevin responded.

For the next 270 minutes Betty delicately maneuvered the Gemini 6 around Gemini 7 as Jason took photos. She got so close that the two craft were almost nose to nose with only one foot separating the two spacecraft. The two spacecraft kept formation so well that at one point neither Betty nor Kevin had to make any adjustments for twenty minutes.

Soon the scheduled sleep period for both crews so Gemini 6 made a separation burn to move about 10 miles away from Gemini 7 to ensure that there were no accidental collisions while they slept.

"See you guys on the ground," Betty radioed to Gemini 7 before both crews turned in for the night.

The following day Gemini 6 prepared for re-entry. They came down very close to the planned re-entry zone just north east of the Turks and Caicos Islands. It was also the first recovery to be televised live as the recovery carrier _USS Wasp_ had a transportable earth satellite station on board and broadcast the recovery through the Intelsat _Early Bird_ which had also broadcast the launch of Gemini 4.

Gemini 7 still had a few day left to go in their mission. On advice from Veronica Lodge both Kevin and Chuck had brought books with them to read.

Then just like on Gemini 5 some malfunctions began to happen. First the fuel cells began to give reduced power. However the ship's batteries were enough to make up the difference for the remainder of the flight. They also began experiencing problems with the thrusters. This was traced in a post-flight examination of the craft to an old type of laminate in the thruster chamber.

When the final day of the mission arrived Kevin and Chuck were eager to return to earth, the novelty of spaceflight had worn off and they were getting frustrated with their cramped quarters. Their re-entry was just as accurate as that of Gemini 6 and they were soon recovered by the _USS Wasp_ which had just sent Betty and Jason back to the mainland.

Both men were somewhat weakened by their time in space, which doctor found similar to spending about two weeks in bed. However they were otherwise in good health and were quite grateful to being on the ground.

Chuck made a joke as he was helped out of the craft that he was going to have to call off his impending wedding to his fiancée Nancy so he could marry Kevin. Somehow Nancy found out and didn't find it very funny.

Gemini 7 would end up holding the record for the longest spaceflight for the next four and a half years.


	14. Chapter 13 - Gemini VIII

**Chapter 13 – Gemini** **VIII**

* * *

NASA was looking to build on the success of Gemini 6. While Gemini 6 had managed to perform rendezvous successfully beyond anything they had expected the goal of docking still had yet to be realized.

The crew of Cheryl Blossom and Josie McCoy was selected to fly Gemini 8, which was also the first all-female crew. On Gemini 8 docking was going to be attempted once again with another Agena Target Vehicle. Along with the docking attempt Gemini 8 was to include an ambitious EVA, with more goals than Nick St. Clair had during his brief twenty minute spacewalk.

The plan for the EVA was that during the first docking, Josie would exit the Gemini capsule while secured with a 25 foot tether, and retrieve a nuclear emulsion radiation experiment from the front of the Gemini spacecraft and the move on to activate a micrometeoroid experiment on the ATV. Then she was to move back to the Gemini capsule and test a minimum reaction power tool by loosening and tightening some bolts.

During the EVA Cheryl would undock from the ATV and Josie would put on the Extravehicular Support Pack (ESP) that as stored at the back of the adapter module. The ESP was a backpack with a self-contained oxygen supply, extra propellant for the Hand Held Maneuver Unit and a seventy five foot extension to the tether. She would then perform a series of maneuvers going back and forth between the ATV and the Gemini while Cheryl kept them separated by about sixty feet.

* * *

 _March 16, 1966, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Cheryl Blossom and Josie McCoy were in their Gemini capsule waiting for launch. About an hour and forty minutes earlier NASA had launched the Atlas-Agena Target Vehicle from the nearby launch complex 14. Unlike with the ATV that had been launched back in October for the Gemini 6 mission this vehicle worked perfectly and maneuvered itself into a 161 mile circular orbit and oriented itself for docking. With word that the ATV was in position Gemini 8's countdown began and soon Cheryl and Josie were hurtling on their way to attempt the first ever docking with another spacecraft.

They reached orbit and after one orbit they began their adjustments to catch up with and rendezvous with the ATV. The first maneuver they made was to help them catch up while the second one put them into a similar orbit as the ATV. The third moved their ship into a similar orbital path and the final adjustment gave them the speed they needed to catch up.

The radar onboard Gemini 8 acquired the ATV when they were 179 miles away. They were able to visual spot the ATV when they were 76 miles away and when they were 55 miles away Cheryl turned over control of the rendezvous to the computer and it's automatic control.

They soon closed to within 151 feet away from the ATV and began station keeping. After 30 minutes of visually inspecting the Agena to make sure that it had not been damaged by the launch. Once they were sure that the Agena was fine they were given the go for docking. Cheryl began steadily moving towards the ATV at a little more than three inches per second and in a matter of minutes the ATV's docking latches clicked and a green light came on in the Gemini capsule that indicated that docking had been successfully completed.

"Flight Control, Gemini 8, we are docked! Yes it was a nice and smooth one!" Josie radioed in happily.

There was some worry on the ground that the ATV's attitude control system was acting up and the correct program might not have been stored in its computer. However this suspicion was quickly found to be incorrect. As Gemini 8 and the ATV were about to pass over a radio blackout area over Asia, Mission Control advised them that if any abnormalities started to occur to abort the docking.

As they passed into darkness the ATV began its pre-programmed maneuvers which began with a ninety degree turn to the right.

"Hey Cheryl, I think we're in a roll," Josie commented.

Cheryl doubled checked the instruments and then looked at the Earth, and sure enough the craft was rolling. Cheryl used the Gemini capsule's thrusters to stop the roll but as soon as she did it began again. At this point they were still out of range from ground controllers.

Josie and Cheryl checked their instruments and Cheryl noticed that the maneuvering fuel had dropped all the way down to thirty percent which suggested that the problem might actually be with their own spacecraft. The astronauts were concerned that spin could end up damaging the Gemini, the ATV or both and possibly cause the heavily fuel laden ATV to explode. Following ground controls last advice they decided to undock and assess the situation.

Josie shut the Agena's program down while Cheryl fought to control the vehicle so that they could undock. As soon it was stable again Josie hit the undock button and Cheryl fired the translation thrusters to push the Gemini away from the ATV.

Now that they were undocked the rate of spin increased. The mass of the ATV had been slowing it down and without it the spin had gotten worse. Just then the Gemini came into communication range with the ship _Coastal Sentry Quebec_ near Japan in the Western Pacific Ocean. By now the spin rate was one revolution per second and Cheryl and Josie's vision was starting to get blurred and they were at risk of passing out. Cheryl decided to shut down the maneuvering system and she used the Re-Entry Control System's (RCS) thrusters to get the capsule back under control.

With the capsule now under control they began testing the maneuvering system to determine the problem and found that one of the roll thrusters had stuck open. They had also use 75% of their Re-entry Control System's fuel stopping the spin. Mission rules dictated that if the RCS was fired for any reason that the mission had to be aborted so Cheryl and Josie began preparing for re-entry.

Ground control decided that they should re-enter one orbit later so that they could land near the secondary recovery forces. The original plan was for Gemini 8 to land in the Atlantic however the ships there were not in position to recover them since the scheduled landing wasn't supposed to be until three days later. Instead the new landing zone was between Okinawa and Japan where the destroyer _USS Leonard F. Mason_ was quickly steaming into position.

The Re-entry took place over China which was out of range of any tracking stations. Aircraft with para-rescuers were deployed in the expected landing area and one plane saw the capsule as it descended on time and on target. It dispatched three para-rescuers who attached a floatation collar to the capsule. Three hours later the _USS Leonard F. Mason_ arrived to take the capsule and the astronauts on board. While Josie and Cheryl were exhausted by the ordeal they had otherwise survived in good condition.

After the flight an investigation was opened to determine what had gone wrong during Gemini 8. The ATV was put through a series of tests by ground controllers doing all sorts of maneuvers until its power and fuel had run out but no problem was ever detected.

There was never any conclusive reason found as to why the one thruster was stuck open. The most probable cause was thought to be an electrical short caused by static electricity. The thruster system was redesigned so that if a single thruster was faulty it could be turned off individual instead of needing to turn off the whole system. It also lead to NASA developing a procedure on how it would deal with mission failures in the future.


	15. Chapter 14 - Gemini IX

**Chapter 14 – Gemini** **IX**

* * *

 _February 28, 1966, St. Louis, Missouri…_

Alexander Cabot and Cedric van Hauten had been named to the prime crew for the _Gemini 9_ mission. They along with their back up crew of Jason Blossom and Melody Valentine, were flying to St. Louis from Riverdale for simulator training on rendezvous and docking procedures at the McDonnell Aircraft facility located there as McDonnell was the constructor of the Gemini spacecraft. It was a routine flight that they had made many times previously.

Both the prime and backup crews flew in Northrop T-38 Talon jet trainers, the same kind that Raoul Hopper had flown two years ago. Alexander and Cedric were in the first jet with Alexander at the controls and Jason and Melody were in the second plane with Jason at the controls. When they arrived at Lambert Field in St. Louis the weather was poor with a mix of rain, snow and fog which required them to fly an instrument approach, something they were both comfortable with. When they emerged from the low crowds they realized they had missed the outer marker and overshot the runway.

Alexander then decided to perform a visual circling approach, which was allowed as long as the pilot can keep the airfield and any preceding aircraft in sight. The weather was adequate for this type of approach but was starting to deteriorate. Jason followed behind Alexander but soon lost Alexander's jet in the clouds so he pulled up and followed the procedures for a missed approach and circled to attempt another instrument landing. Meanwhile Alexander completed a full circle to the left at an altitude of about 500 feet and announced his intention to land on runway 24 which ran from south-west to north-east.

With his landing gear down and flaps extended Alexander brought the plane down but he was too far left of the runway. Alexander pushed the throttle forward engaging the afterburner as he attempted a go-around and he pulled up and turned right, however it was too late. The plane struck McDonnell Building 101 on the north-east side of the airfield. The right wing and landing gear were torn off and the plane cartwheeled and crashed in a nearby parking lot

Both Alexander and Cedric died instantly from the crash. Cedric was beheaded by the impact and his head was later found in the rafters of Building 101. Inside the building 17 McDonnell employees and contractors were injured by falling debris from the collision, nobody too seriously. The crash also caused several small fires and some minor flooding from the numerous broken pipes and sprinklers.

By an eerie coincidence Alexander and Cedric died within 500 feet of their _Gemini 9_ spacecraft which was in the final stages of assembly in another part of Building 101.

Meanwhile up above Jason and Melody were still circling in their T-38 as they prepared to make a second approach. The air traffic controllers at Lambert Field were confused by the two planes which had been flying in formation attempting different abort actions after the first missed approach, on top of that nobody on the ground knew who was in the crashed plane.

After a delay Jason and Melody were asked to identify themselves and then they were given permission to land. Jason executed a perfect instrument approach and brought his T-38 down to a safe landing. Once they were on the ground they were informed about Alexander and Cedric's crash.

Both Jason and Melody were personally distraught over the loss of their colleagues, however Jason acted as NASA's chief contact on the scene until other personnel arrived to relieve him later in the day.

With the loss of Alexander and Cedric, Jason and Melody were moved up to the prime crew position for _Gemini 9_. The backup crew for _Gemini 10_ , Chuck Clayton and Katy Keene, were moved up to replace Jason and Melody as the new backup crew for _Gemini 9_.

NASA also appointed a seven member panel to investigate the crash headed by Chief of the Astronaut office Archie Andrews. The panel looked into all possibilities for the crash from including medical issues, aircraft maintenance problems, weather conditions and air traffic control factors. In the end the cause of the crash was pilot error citing Alexander's inability to maintain visual reference for landing, and that his eagerness to "get it on the ground" led to him making the decision to attempt a less safer approach rather than attempt a second attempt at an instrument approach which Jason had managed to do without an issue.

* * *

 _May 17, 1966, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

The crew of _Gemini 9_ were waiting in their capsule as nearby on launch complex 14 an Atlas booster with an Agena Target Vehicle took off. They were preparing for launch when ten minutes later word came to them, the launch was cancelled. The Atlas booster had failed.

"Really, again?" Jason asked aloud to nobody in particular.

He had gone through the same situation on _Gemini 6_.

As technicians helped the two astronauts out of the capsule already an investigation was underway to discover what had happened to the Atlas-Agena Target Vehicle.

It was eventually discovered that the one engine on the Atlas booster had moved to the right and caused the whole rocket to pitch over and actually begin flying back towards the launch pad. The rest of the rocket performed exactly as it was supposed to and the Agena flew straight into the Atlantic Ocean.

* * *

 _June 1, 1966, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

After the first time an ATV had failed, McDonnell had built designed something called the Augmented Target Docking Adapter (ATDA) as a contingency. The ATDA was basically a dummy Agena stage with a docking collar, but it had no propulsion system of its own. The plans to use the Agena to boost _Gemini 9_ 's orbit wouldn't be able to take place, but it would serve the purpose for all other goals.

Jason and Melody were once again in their capsule awaiting lift off. Nearby the ADTA was launched atop an Atlas booster. Unlike with the ATV just two weeks earlier this lift off went perfectly and the ADTA was put into a 161 mile orbit. However once it was in orbit telemetry indicated that the shroud that covered the docking collar to protect it from the aerodynamic forces at launch, had failed to open properly.

NASA wasn't sure exactly what the issue was and thought that perhaps the astronauts could resolve it once they were in orbit so there was no reason to cancel the launch of _Gemini 9_.

However three minutes prior to launch the ground computers lost contact with the computer on _Gemini 9_. The forty second launch window came and went without launch. Launch would have to be held for two days so that Gemini 9 would be able to rendezvous with the ADTA without using too much fuel.

The incident ended up earning Jason the nickname "Mayor of Pad 19", although most other astronauts just called him "The Mayor".

* * *

 _June 3, 1966, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

The second launch attempt on June 3 went off without an incident. With this launch Jason could say that he had been strapped in for launch six times for only two launches.

Once in orbit _Gemini 9_ made a series of burns to close in on the ADTA. Three hours and twenty minutes into the flight when they were about 58 miles away they had their first visual sighting of the ADTA. Jason and Melody noticed that they could see the flashing strobe light on the ADTA which were designed to aid with identification from distance. This made them hopeful that the telemetry that said the shroud had separated was incorrect.

H owever as they got closer they saw that the ADTA was in a slow rotation and that the conical nose cone was still attached. However it was partially opened a few feet so that the docking adapter could be seen inside.

"The shroud is still attached," Jason reported to the ground. "It looks like an angry alligator out here rotating around."

Jason piloted Gemini 9 on a fly around of the ADTA examining it to see what could be done. Jason suggested getting in close and using the Gemini to try and pry the "jaws" open but ground control immediately shot that idea down fearing that it could end up dangerously damaging the Gemini capsule.

As they got a close look Jason and Melody described how the shroud's explosive bolts had fired but had been held on by two neatly tape lanyards. Down on the ground Katy Keene the backup pilot suggested that Melody perform an EVA where she cuts the lanyard with a pair of surgical scissors in the equipment pack. An experiment on the ground showed that the scissors could indeed cut the lanyard, but ground control was once again very much against the idea. There were plenty of things that could wrong from undetonated explosive bolts going off, to the lanyards snapping from the tension when they were cut and slicing open Melody's spacesuit.

Unable to attempt docking Jason instead performed some approach practices as he approached the ADTA from below before backing off once more so he and Melody could eat and get some rest.

The next day they did some more approach practice this time from above. They were given permission for Melody to do her EVA but the two of them were tired and Jason didn't want to waste fuel keeping the Gemini near the ADTA during the EVA since there was little they could do with it. The EVA was instead postponed until the next day.

On the third day Melody began the EVA which proved to be trouble from the start. After pumping up the pressure of her suit it became stiff and didn't want to bend.

"The suit has a life of its own!" Melody complained.

As soon as she left the spacecraft she began to tumble uncontrollably which was not helped by her umbilical which moved wildly and gave Melody difficulty in controlling her movements. However eventually she made it back to the hatch.

The main goal of the EVA was to test the Astronaut Maneuvering Unit (AMU) which was a backpack that had its own propulsion, stabilization system, oxygen and telemetry. It used hydrogen peroxide as a propellant and because it produced hot gases Melody's spacesuit was modified with "pants" made of a woven steel known as "Choreml-R" which would later be used on the spacesuits worn on the moon.

Melody slowly began to pull herself around to the rear of the spacecraft where the AMU was stored. While she was disconnecting herself from the spacecraft umbilical and hooking up to the backpack her heart rate soared to 155 beats per minute and she was sweating profusely.

"This stupid suit is as flexible as a rusty suit of armour," Melody complained.

The lack of movement was making everything take longer to do than expected. The lack of hand and footholds meant that it was difficult for Melody to get any leverage which in turn made it difficult to do something as simple as turn a valve. At this point Melody was beginning to get incredibly tired and her heart rate soared to 180 beats per minute. As she sweated her visor began to fog clouding her vision.

At this point there seemed to be risk in continuing the EVA. The flight surgeon was concerned that Melody might end up passing out from the exertion and the next thing she had to do was disconnected the AMU from the spacecraft. This was a difficult task as it would have to be done with just one hand and which would be made more difficult by the lack of motion of the spacesuit.

Melody wanted to continue but Jason called an end to the EVA. He ordered Melody to get back inside before she could test the AMU. Melody managed to make her way back to the cockpit and Jason held onto her legs to give her a rest and assist her back into the spacecraft. After trying to remove a mirror that was mounted on the side of the spacecraft so that Jason could watch what she had been doing near the back Melody's suit's cooling system overheated and her face plate fogged up completely leaving her essentially blind. Melody also felt an excruciating pain as she moved back into her seat and she had to awkwardly slide down into the spacecraft so that Jason could get the hatch closed. Once it was closed Jason set about repressurizing the spacecraft.

T he EVA was one of the last major things that they did on their mission. They soon set about preparing for re-entry and after some rest they re-entered. This time the re-entry computer worked perfectly and _Gemini 9_ came down just a half-mile from their planned re-entry location. They were close enough that their splashdown could be photographed from the deck of the recovery ship _USS Wasp_.

The two were soon on board the _Wasp_ in relatively good health. Jason was obviously in better shape than Melody. An examination of Melody showed that she had lost quite a bit of weight, most of it in the sweat that was pooled in the pant legs of her spacesuit. However she also had a large narrow burn down her back. An examination of her spacesuit showed that the insulation had split, it was fortunate that it had happened just as Melody had been re-entering the capsule otherwise the burn could have been far worse.

The experience led to a re-evaluation both of how EVA's were conducted as well as for how the spacesuit cooling systems operated. Despite the setbacks NASA considered _Gemini 9_ a learning experience that gave them a lot of information on how to proceed with a mission to the moon.


	16. Chapter 15 - Gemini X

**Chapter 15 – Gemini** **X**

* * *

While NASA saw Gemini 9 as a success the general public didn't. The fact that docking wasn't achieved and the shroud didn't separate from the ADTA were seen as failures as was the fact that Melody had been unable to successfully demonstrate man's ability to function in outer space.

As such Gemini 10's goals were only slightly modified from Gemini 9's original goals, which in turn had been similar to Gemini 8's. The first major objective was to dock with an Agena Target Vehicle and then use the Agena to fly to an even higher orbit. This would test the radiation levels at that altitude as well as allow them to attempt to rendezvous with the spent Agena from Gemini 8 which had been left dormant in orbit after its batteries had run out. There were also several ambitious EVA goals. The AMU from Gemini 9 was abandoned but there were plans to do an EVA over to the dormant Gemini 8 Agena to retrieve a Micrometeorite Collector Experiment on the Agena.

The crew selected for this mission for this mission was Ginger Lopez as the commander and Alan M. Mayberry as the pilot, with their backups being Avalon Priss and Wilbur Wilkins respectively. Alan was from the Third Astronaut Group, and was by far the biggest and fittest from that Astronaut class. Some at NASA suspected that perhaps the failure of Melody's EVA wasn't the tasks she had to accomplish but perhaps that she simply wasn't strong enough. Melody vehemently disagreed with that, stating that it was the lack of mobility of the spacesuit and the difficult in moving that made it so difficult and led to the EVA's lack of success.

While the scientists at NASA may have been a little divided however, the astronauts were quite firm in their support for Melody; just as they had been for Harvey after his Mercury flight when he was blamed for blowing the hatch when in fact he hadn't. Alan discussed with Melody some of the difficulties she had encountered during her EVA, although there wasn't a lot of time to train for these things before the launch of Gemini 10.

* * *

 _July 18, 1966, Cape Kennedy Florida…_

On Launch Complex 14 the Atlas booster roared to life and lifted into the air carrying with it the Agena Target Vehicle while nearby on Launch Complex 19 Ginger and Alan were strapped into their Gemini capsule atop its Titan II booster ready for lift off. About fifteen minutes later they received word that the ATV had been launched perfectly and that they were good to go. Both astronauts then strapped in for the ride to orbit.

After a fairly smooth ride to orbit they prepared to rendezvous with the ATV. Alan attempted to navigate with a Kollsman sextant while Ginger steered the spacecraft as they attempted observational navigation. However Alan soon realized that he was using the wrong reference, he had mistaken the airglow, the glowing blue layer of air that was visible from orbit on the edge of the Earth, as the horizon. However even after correcting this he couldn't get the lens of the sextant to work properly. He set the Kollsman sextant aside and instead tried a Ilon sextant, however this smaller one had a limited field of view and was impossible to use as it's field of view was too limited.

Fortunately they had a backup in the form of the computers on the ground and ground control was able passed on instructions for the burns they would need to make to rendezvous with the ATV. The Gemini capsule's first burn was slightly off course and this required two more burns to correct their course, however five hours and fifty-two minutes after launch, Gemini 10 was successfully docked with the Agena.

The maneuvers to rendezvous and dock with the ATV had eaten up a lot of their fuel, sixty percent in fact. Plans to undock and dock again as practice were cancelled since the fuel would need to be saved for the second attempted rendezvous. Instead it was decided that they would remain attached to the ATV as long as possible to use its fuel for maneuvering instead.

After they oriented the docked combination spacecraft they ignited the Agena's main engine. The engine itself wasn't loud but there was a great deal of vibration in the Gemini capsule that caused noise. Ginger and Alan were pressed up against their seat straps as they were flying backwards as the Agena boosted the apogee of their orbit. The burn lasted for 80 seconds before the Agena shut off putting them in a highly elliptical 159 by 412 mile orbit. This was the highest that anyone had ever been. However because they were still docked with the Agena they didn't have a great view of the Earth from this height as it was mostly blocked by the big rocket.

They were more focused though on the spacecraft and on taking radiation readings. They found no issues with the spacecraft and found that radiation readings were no different than in a lower orbit. They did however have time to take a few pictures which showed the curvature of the earth.

After this it was their sleep period which lasted for eight hours. When they awoke they had a busy day ahead of them. The first thing they did was make a burn with the ATV to put them on course to rendezvous with Gemini 8 ATV. They made one burn to lower their orbit to 159 by 206 miles and then a second burn that put them into a circular orbit at 204 miles.

It was now time for the first of the two scheduled EVAs. This EVA was a simple one called a stand-up EVA where Alan would simple "stand" in the hatch of the EVA and take some pictures (of course it wasn't really standing in the weightless conditions of space).

Previous issues with opening and closing the hatch had been worked on and the hatch opened with no issue as Alan began his EVA just as the Gemini was travelling from light into darkness. Alan took a series of ultraviolet pictures of the stars during the entire time that they were in darkness. As they passed into daylight Alan switched over to colour photography however he had a difficult time as his eyes soon began to well up with tears. Soon Ginger began having the same problem and they decided to end the EVA early as they were both having difficulty seeing.

They closed the hatch and began repressurizing the spacecraft. As they did they tried to figure out what had caused them to tear up. At first they suspected that the anti-fog spray they had used was the culprit. However they noticed a strange odour that they soon suspected was lithium hydroxide which was used in the environmental system to remove carbon dioxide. The ground engineers deduced that the problem was that the problem was that having both of the suit fans on at the same time was what was causing the problems. They turned one of the fans off and noticed the scent subsided and soon the irritation did as well. At this point they were both quite tired and they began their second sleep period.

When they woke up they started their preparations to dock with the Gemini 8 Agena. They undocked from their Agena and began making their way to the Gemini 8 Agena. Because the batteries were dead they could only spot the Gemini 8 visually, there was no radar. It wasn't until they were 16 miles away that they were able to spot it and after a few small correction burns they were soon station-keeping just 10 feet away from the Gemini 8 Agena.

Ginger and Alan both looked the Agena over. Despite its lack of fuel and power it seemed to be rather stable and it wasn't tumbling or anything. It was ideal for the planned EVA. Ginger and Alan began preparing for the second EVA.

For the second time in the flight Alan opened the hatch. The first thing he did was retrieve a micrometeorite collector experiment from the side of the Gemini capsule. He managed it with some difficulty and returned it to the capsule. However it ended up floating out of the capsule later during the EVA and was lost.

Next Alan travelled over to the Agena and tried to grab onto the docking cone. He found it was nearly impossible since the cone was smooth. Using his Hand Held Maneuvering Unit, Alan moved back to the Gemini before moving towards the Agena again. This time he was able to grab a wire bundle to hold onto and retrieve a second micrometeorite collector on the Agena. He was supposed to replace it with another one, but couldn't figure out how to do that without losing the one he had retrieved so he decided not to replace it.

"This is as difficult as Melody said it would be," Alan commented to Ginger.

His next task was to test out the HHMU however it ended up running out of fuel rather quickly and meant that the EVA came to an end after just 39 minutes. When Alan got back in they had a difficult time closing the hatch, not because of any issues with the hatch like on previous EVAs, but because of the 50 foot umbilical.

Once Alan was onboard and hooked back up to the regular Gemini life support systems they opened up the hatch once more and jettisoned the umbilical and chest pack that Alan had worn. Neither one was needed anymore and would just be an issue during re-entry. With their garbage disposal task complete Ginger and Alan focused on re-entry.

The re-entry went according to plan and a little more than 70 hours from when they had launched Gemini 10 came down in the Atlantic Ocean just over 3 miles away from their recovery ship, the _USS Guadalcanal_ which watched them splashdown. Soon the two astronauts were on board safe and sound.

With Gemini 10 many of the goals of the Gemini program had been achieved. However there were still issues with a successful EVA and NASA still wanted to do further experimentation with high altitude orbits which they would do on Gemini 11.


	17. Chapter 16 - Gemini XI

**Chapter 16 – Gemini** **XI**

* * *

Gemini 10 had been an overall success. NASA felt they had the logistics of rendezvous and docking nailed down. They had found that travelling higher than low Earth orbit was perfectly safe as well. But there was still the nagging issue of Extra Vehicular Activity. With the exception of Nick's EVA which was schedule to be just twenty minutes, every EVA they had attempted so far had to be either cancelled or cut short and there was an issue with mobility and over exertion.

The goals for Gemini 11 were similar to those of Gemini 10, except bigger. The plan for Gemini 11 was to once again dock with an Agena. However this time they were going to attempt a direct ascent rendezvous with the Agena Target Vehicle; that is to rendezvous during the first orbit. They also planned to ride the Agena to an even higher altitude than Gemini 10 had achieved.

There were some new experiments as well. One major one was to attach link the Gemini and the ATV with a tether in an attempt demonstrate passive attitude stabilization and to try and create an artificial gravity by spinning the two spacecraft.

The crew chosen for this mission was Veronica Lodge as the commander and Ambrose Pipps as the pilot with Cheryl Blossom and Trula Twyst serving as their backups.

After Alan Mayberry had experienced difficulties with his EVA on Gemini 10, it was finally conceded by all within NASA that perhaps the training for EVA that they currently had in place was flawed. Katy Keene along with Alan and Melody Valentine helped to design a neutral buoyancy training pool at the Manned Space Center in Riverdale. Melody was one of the first to test the new facility and found that it closely matched the effort she had during her EVA on Gemini 9.

Unfortunately by the time the facility was ready it was nearly time for Gemini 11 to launch so Ambrose Pipp, who would be the one doing the EVA, didn't get the opportunity to use the new training facility.

* * *

 _September 12, 1966, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Gemini 11 had originally been scheduled to launch on September 9, but a small leak in nitrogen tetroxide tank of the first stage of the Titan II booster when it was being fuelled had been found and it had taken a day to make repairs. Then on September 10, the launch was delayed again when issues with the Atlas-Agena Target Vehicle's autopilot was detected. The problem was found to be due to higher than normal winds so launch had been delayed until a day with calmer winds.

Now conditions were perfect and just 97 minutes earlier the Atlas-Agena had lifted off and placed itself into a perfect orbit. Gemini 11 now had a very small two second window within which to begin lift off if they were to accomplish the first orbit rendezvous. And just a half-second into that very brief window the Titan II lifted away from Launch Complex 19 with Veronica and Ambrose onboard. The Titan II performed perfect and six and a half minutes later the Gemini 11 capsule separated from the booster and Veronica and Ambrose began making preparations for the first orbit rendezvous.

They made the first burn to adjust their orbit which should have put them in line to rendezvous with the ATV. At this point they had gone out of communications range with the ground. They then turned on the radar and it locked on almost immediately to the one on the ATV. When they came back into communications range they were already within 50 miles of the ATV. They were passing from darkness into light as they quickly closed on the Agena and they both had to scramble to protect their eyes from the sudden bright sunlight. However they were just off the coast of California when they were just 15 meters away from the ATV.

"We did," Ambrose happily reported. "M equals 1, Mr. Weatherbee."

Flight Director Weatherbee had been one of the people at NASA who didn't think that first orbit rendezvous could be done. M equals 1 was a formula where the value M was the orbit on which rendezvous was achieved.

Down on the ground Flight Director Weatherbee gave a one dollar bill to Dr. Dilton Doiley who had been the one who had first proposed attempting first orbit rendezvous. The two had made a bet as to whether or not it could be achieved.

"Best dollar I ever lost in a bet," Weatherbee said as he handed the bill to Dilton.

Up in space Veronica meanwhile docked the Gemini to the ATV. They each now had the opportunity to do something that NASA had wanted to do for some time, undock and dock again. Veronica and Ambrose each took a two turns undocking and docking, once in daylight and once in darkness. This was also the first time that the co-pilot was given the opportunity to dock the vehicle.

They then test fired the Agena's main engine briefly to make sure it was working. They were both impressed by the feeling of acceleration as the Agena's engine push them into a different orbital plane. Ginger Lopez who had been the commander on Gemini 10 was the CAPCOM at the time.

"Whoa Ginger you were right," Veronica exclaimed. "That riding that Agena is a thrill!"

With everything on the flight so far a success the crew put their spacecraft into a low-power mode and ate a meal before taking a rest for the next eight hours. The only complaint that they had was that their windows were dirty, something that had plagued all the other Gemini flights.

On the ground Avalon Priss had taken over as CAPCOM and she informed the crew that NASA wanted Ambrose to wipe Veronica's window with a dry cloth during his EVA and bring it back to the ground for testing.

Veronica and Ambrose then began preparing for the first planned EVA of the mission.

On schedule they opened the hatch. There was a rush as the little remaining air in the cabin rushed out. Veronica held onto Ambrose stopping him from being sucked out as well. Ambrose first retrieved an experiment pack and gave it to Veronica who stowed it under her seat. Then he tried to mount a camera that would record his movements but this was difficult. Veronica was holding onto Ambrose's umbilical and she had to let out enough so that Ambrose was floating over the camera which was partially in its mounting bracket and he hit it into place with his fist.

Ambrose's next task was to attach a 100 foot long tether that was mounted on the ATV to the Gemini. To do this he had to first go over to the ATV where the tether was stored just behind the dock collar. Ambrose pushed forward but because of the lack of flexibility in his spacesuit his aim was off and he missed the mark heading out into open space. Veronica pulled him back towards the hatch by the umbilical and he attempted to move again. On the second try Ambrose reach the ATV without issue.

During practice on a zero-G aircraft flight Ambrose had been able to wedge his feet and legs between the spacecraft and adapter to hold himself in place. The lack of flexibility of the suit in space made this much more difficult and Ambrose found that he had to hold himself in place with one hand while trying to operate the tether clamp with the other. Ambrose struggled for a good six minutes before he managed to get the tether attached to the Agena.

Next Ambrose tried to deploy a mirror that would let Veronica see him when he moved to the back of the capsule. Ambrose tugged at the attachment but the mirror would not deploy. Instead he just gave it up as not worth the effort. So far he hadn't even had a chance to try and wipe Veronica's window. As Ambrose made his way back towards the hatch on his way towards the back of the Gemini, Veronica could see that he was already exhausted. His face was covered with sweat and he was blinking constantly from the sweat getting into his eyes. Veronica decided to bring Ambrose back in early, at this point they were out of communications range with the ground and by the time they were back in communications range Ambrose was back in the capsule.

An hour later they opened the hatch once more and jettisoned the EVA gear. There was still a stand-up EVA scheduled but that could be done without any of the extra gear which would just crowd up the cabin.

On previous missions the exhaustion after EVA had ended up having an effect on the rest of the mission. However on Gemini 11 the mission planners had prepared for this and so Veronica and Ambrose had little to do for the rest of the day. They ate another meal and then had their second night in space.

The next day they awoke and decided to skip breakfast to prepare for the big burn of the ATV's main engine that would take them to a record high altitude. They wanted everything possible strapped down much like for re-entry.

T hey were 40 and a half hours into their spaceflight when they fired the engine of the ATV. The engine belched a fiery stream for 26 seconds as it added more than 625 miles per hour to their speed. For a moment both Veronica and Ambrose wondered if perhaps they were going to be carried away from the Earth and out into space.

As they reached the apex of their orbit they were treated to a view that nobody had seen before or would ever see again from almost 740 miles above the ground. The curvature of the Earth was so pronounced that there was absolutely no doubt that it was indeed round.

They spent two orbits in this highly elliptical orbit taking photos and checking the radiation levels. The radiation was found to be less than that of an X-ray and they took over 300 pictures. Then they used the Agena to slow the Gemini down to a near circular one at 184 miles.

They then took the time to eat a meal before they began preparations for the stand-up EVA. Ambrose opened the hatch for the second EVA. He was held in place with a short tether so he wouldn't have to worry about maintaining his own body position.

During the night pass of the EVA Ambrose was to take pictures of the star fields. However because of her dirty window Veronica had difficulty maneuvering the capsule into position. However Ambrose was able to talk her through act as her eyes outside the capsule. While waiting for the second night pass Ambrose suddenly went quiet. A little worried Veronica poked her co-pilot who shifted startled.

"Sorry, I just sort of fell asleep there," he apologized.

"Well that's a first," Veronica commented. "Sleeping in a vacuum."

Soon the EVA was over and Ambrose was back inside.

"Boy are my legs tired from standing so long," Ambrose joked.

With the EVA over Veronica and Ambrose rested and prepared for the next major event of the spaceflight, the tether flight experiment.

Once they were ready they positioned the ATV-Gemini combination so that the Agena was pointing directly towards the ground and then undocked. The theory was that the Agena would pull away as would the Gemini until the tether became taut.

Unfortunately as they were backing away the tether got caught up not once but twice. Veronica was forced to make so different movements that ended up leaving both spacecraft wobbling in space. Veronica stabilized the Gemini and waited for the ATV to stabilize, however after a while it didn't seem to be stabilizing and ground control suspected their might be an issue with the ATV's auto-stabilization system. Ground control suggested that they instead attempt the artificial gravity experiment.

Veronica found however she had another problem, the tether wasn't taut. Instead it was wobbling about sort of like a skipping rope between the two spacecraft, although neither the crew nor the scientists on the ground could figure out why. For ten minutes she jockeyed the Gemini around until she got an even tether.

With the tether finally taught Veronica used the Gemini's thrusters to slowly rotate the two tethered spacecraft like a pair of bolas. At first both the Gemini and ATV wobbled around at each end, but eventually centrifugal force took over and the line straightened out as did the spacecraft. As they passed into the night pass Veronica and Ambrose decided to eat a meal.

As they passed into daylight once more ground control asked them to increase the rate of spin for the two craft. Veronica and Ambrose were reluctant but did as they were told. As the two astronauts suspected the acceleration caused both their Gemini capsule and the Agena to begin wobbling wildly again. Veronica used the thrusters to stabilize the Gemini and was surprised when the Agena stabilized soon afterwards.

The rotation checked out at about 55 degrees per minute and the crew then checked out to see if they had created an artificial gravity. They tested this by placing a camera on the instrument panel and watched as it slowly moved towards the back of the spacecraft. Later calculations placed the gravity they created at 0.00015g or one six thousand six hundred and sixty-sixth of Earth's gravity. Veronica and Ambrose thought didn't really feel like they were in any kind of gravity situation.

After three hours the crew finally jettisoned the tether and re-oriented their Gemini. Because their fuel usage had been less than expected they then attempted another attempt to station keep and rendezvous with the ATV. First moving ahead of it, and then behind by changing their orbital altitude.

After two rendezvouses with the ATV Gemini was finally ready to land. On this flight the landing was going to be controlled entirely by the onboard computer with no input from the crew. The computer brought them down to a near-perfect landing just three miles away from their recovery ship the _USS Guam_. And soon after the crew was safe and sound onboard the aircraft carrier.


	18. Chapter 17 - Gemini XII

**Chapter 17 – Gemini** **XII**

* * *

Gemini 11 had proven to be a success and so far all the goals of the Gemini Program had been accomplished, except for one. So far no Extra Vehicular Activity had been done without encountering some sort of issue causing it to come to an end early. This was seen as a critical obstacle to overcome because if they couldn't prove that men and women could work in the vacuum of space without issue then there was little point in putting a person on the moon. As such EVA was the main goal of Gemini 12. Docking and rendezvous practice were still to take place, but the primary goal above all other was a completely successful EVA.

The crew selected for Gemini 12 was Gemini 7 veteran Chuck Clayton, and Katy Keene who was known by the other astronauts as Dr. Rendezvous for her role in working out how orbital mechanics worked to accomplish rendezvous and docking. Keene had also been one of the astronauts who helped design neutral buoyancy training to practice EVA.

In the months leading up to the spaceflight Katy spent hours practicing for her EVA along with her backup and Gemini 9 veteran Melody Valentine. Along with the train McDonnell Aircraft, the makers of the Gemini capsule, had increased the number of hand and footholds on the capsule. As launch day approached Katy felt confident that she would be able to prove that a person could perform tasks in the vacuum of space.

* * *

 _November 11, 1966, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

The Titan II booster with the Gemini 12 capsule attached to the top of it lifted off into the air just after 3:45 PM. With the successful launch the Gemini program finished with 12 perfect launches. Soon Gemini 12 had radar contact with the ATV which had been launched an hour and a half before them. However when they were 75 miles away they radar began to have problems. This meant that Chuck and Katy would have to complete rendezvous manually.

Gemini 12 had the right person on board as Katy was part of the team that had worked out the various calculations for the orbital burns for the other Gemini flights to accomplish rendezvous. While Katy navigated Chuck flew the spacecraft and four hours and thirteen minutes into the flight Gemini 12 was docked with the ATV.

Chuck and Katy then both took turns docking and undocking like Veronica and Ambrose had previously on Gemini 11. The next part of the flight was to use the ATV to travel to a higher orbit. However when the ATV had been entering orbit ground control noticed a drop of thrust, along with a decrease in speed from one of the fuel pumps. Ground control suspected that the turbo pump had been damaged and that attempting to start up the engine could cause the ATV to break apart.

T he cancellation of the high-altitude burn ended up being fortuitous. There was an upcoming solar eclipse and this would be the first ever chance to photograph one from space. Using the Agena's secondary propulsion system for maneuvering with calculations from the ground Chuck put the Gemini into an orbit that would put it into position to photograph the eclipse. Once it was in position Chuck and Katy ate a meal and took their first sleep period.

They awoke the next day to news that they would need to make a minor adjustment to their orbit to be properly aligned for the eclipse. They ended up being exactly on line and they ended up getting some photographs of the eclipse although they were slightly blurred by the windows of their Gemini capsule.

After viewing the solar eclipse Chuck and Katy set about preparing for the first of the three scheduled EVAs for the mission. This first EVA was a stand-up EVA. Katy opened the hatch and simply stood there allowing her eyes to become acclimated. Once she had she tossed a bag of garbage from the capsule free. Katy was comparing all of her movements to the training she had done in the tank.

She then set up an ultraviolet astronomical camera. During the night passes Katy took photographs of the star fields and during the daylight passes Katy reloaded the film, installed a movie camera to record her later EVA, took a few regular pictures, and repaired a hand hold. All in all it was a rather productive two hours and twenty minutes.

Once the EVA was over Katy re-entered the capsule without much hassle and the crew had a meal before their second sleep period.

The third day was to feature the main event of the mission. The EVA that Katy had spent hours practicing for to see if a person could function in space. The first thing Katy did was move the movie camera she had installed the day before to a different mount. Then using the handrail that had been installed and ran from the hatch to the nose of the Gemini capsule she moved using just her hands till she was at the docking adapter.

There was a tether on the ATV like there had been on Gemini 11 and Katy attached the tether to the Gemini. She didn't experience any issues like Ambrose had because she had a waist tether to help keep herself in place.

Next she made her way back to the hatch where she exchanged cameras with Chuck and then continued on to the back of the Gemini capsule. At the back there was a pair of foot restraints and when Katy put her feet in them she found that they held her in place let allowed her a wide range of motion. She then set about unpacking a toolkit and testing it out doing some basic mechanical work to see if it was possible and found that it was.

Katy then returned to the hatch area and rested for a few minutes before continuing to the ATV once more. As Chuck watched she did some similar mechanical experiments on the ATV attempting to disconnect and reconnect some electrical connectors which she managed to do without much difficulty. She then attempted to use a torque wrench which had been designed for the Apollo program and found that it worked well.

As Katy made her way back to the hatch she took a moment to wipe down Chuck's window with a cloth, something that Ambrose had been planning to do during his EVA on Gemini 11 but never did.

"Hey do you think you can check the oil too?" Chuck asked jokingly.

Katy then climbed back in the hatch and stood watching as Chuck fired the thrusters. She then sat down and easily closed the hatch and the two of them began repressurizing the cabin and settling down for a meal and sleep once again.

On the fourth day they once again attempted tethered station keeping like Gemini 11 had. As with Gemini 11 there was difficulty in getting the tether taut at first, and the two spacecraft were both prone to quite a bit of wiggling when it did become taut and after any attempt to maneuver. The tethered experiment lasted for about four hours before they jettisoned the tether.

They then prepared for the final EVA, which was another stand-up EVA. This one was short scheduled for less than an hour. The first thing Katy did when she opened the hatch was get rid of the no longer necessary equipment from her previous EVA like the cumbersome umbilical as well as some of their garbage. She then took some more ultraviolet photographs of the stars while they were on the darkside of their orbit and as they were passing back into daylight she went back inside and closed the hatch, ending the last EVA of the Gemini Program.

With all of their main objectives now accomplished Chuck and Katy began preparing for re-entry. Gemini 12 re-entered during it's fifty-ninth orbit and came down within three miles of the recovery ship _USS Wasp_.

With Gemini 12 now over, the Gemini Program had officially come to an end. All of NASA's effort was now completely devoted to Project Apollo which had been underdevelopment since 1961 and was only now just getting ready to fly. However the Gemini Program had been instrumental in the development of the Apollo spacecraft and the lessons learned from Gemini would be applied to help reach the goal of putting a man, or woman, on the moon.


	19. Chapter 18 - Project Apollo

**Chapter 18 – Project Apollo**

* * *

Following the successful completion of the Gemini program NASA was ready to move on to Project Apollo. Project Apollo had been underdevelopment since 1961 starting with the development of the Saturn 1 launch vehicle.

The first Saturn 1 was launched on October 27, 1961. It was a successful test of just the first stage of the rocket. Three more similar tests followed until on the fifth test the second stage was tested for the first time on January 29, 1964. With this launch NASA's lift capability exceeded what the Soviets could manage for the first time since the Soviets had launched Sputnik.

Following this launch NASA then used the Saturn 1 for testing flying test models of the Apollo command module, as well as a series of three satellites called Pegasus which were used to study the frequency of micrometeorite impacts on a spacecraft, to see if a spacecraft would be able to make the journey to the moon and back without suffering a fatal penetration by an undetectable micrometeorite. None of the satellites suffered any kind of damage that would prove deadly during the duration of their service showing that a trip to the moon would be possible.

However the Saturn 1 was just the start of NASA's heavy lift rocket development. In 1966 using improved engines and a redesigned upper stage NASA launched the first Saturn 1B which carried an unmanned version of the initial Apollo command and service module. It was a test to see if the service module engine could be fired a second time in space (a crucial part of a manned flight to the moon) and also to test the CSM heat shield. The test was largely successful with just a few minor problem that could be easily remedied.

There were two more test flights with the Saturn 1B including a second test of the Apollo CSM after which it was certified for human flight. The first crew to fly on the Apollo spacecraft was selected. It consisted of the veteran of Liberty Bell 7 and Gemini 3, Harvey Kinkle; the first American spacewalker and Gemini 4 veteran, Nick St. Clair and rookie astronaut Eddie Turner. The crew named their mission Apollo 1.

Development of the Apollo Command Module was beset with numerous issues from the contractor North American Aviation. The original plan had been for Apollo 1 to fly concurrently with Gemini 12 in November of 1966, however delays meant that it would be able to fly around the end of February 1967 at the earliest.

The Command Module wasn't the only component North American was contracted to build. They were also the developers of the second stage of the massive Saturn V rocket which would be used to carry the astronauts to the moon (the Saturn 1B was only for testing components in orbit). Delays with the second stage of the Saturn V (called the S-II) pushed the test launch of an unmanned Saturn V from late 1966 all the way to November of 1967.

However these were only the beginning of the delays…

* * *

 _January 27, 1967, Cape Kennedy, Florida…_

Harvey Kinkle, Nick St. Clair and Eddie Turner were clad in their pressure suits on board the Apollo 1 capsule for a "plugs-out" test. The plugs out test was a simulation of launch where the functions of the spacecraft were tested while there was no fuel or pyrotechnics active on the spacecraft.

The cabin of the spacecraft was filled with pure oxygen, just as it would be during launch, although the spacecraft was running off of simulated fuel cell power as the fuel cells weren't loaded.

They were in the process of doing a simulated countdown to launch and there was a hold at ten minutes to lift off because of an issue with the communications system between the crew and the blockhouse.

Suddenly there was an exclamation of shock from Harvey.

"Hey! Fire!" he shouted.

"We've got a fire in the cockpit," Eddie reported.

Outside the capsule people were caught off guard, how could there be a fire?

"We're fighting a bad fire," Nick reported his transmission rather garbled. "Let's get out… Open 'er up!"

A moment later there was a cry of pain. In the blockhouse there were television monitors of the interior of the cabin and on it appeared as though Nick was attempting to open the main hatch as flames spread from across the screen.

In the pure oxygen rich environment of the spacecraft the fire burned fiercely and quickly. The pressure inside quickly rose to almost double which ruptured the walls of the Command Module. The intense heat and thick smoke hampered the ground crew who were wearing gas masks designed for toxic fumes rather than the dense smoke they were contending with. There were fears that the flames would ignite the solid rocket fuel in the escape tower, causing it to launch. This could have quite possibly killed the ground crew attempting to rescue the astronauts.

The rupture of the cabin caused a backdraft which caused the flames to intensify in the cabin and then the cabin began to fill with carbon monoxide and soot as cool air from outside rushed in essentially quenching the fire.

It took pad workers nearly five minutes to open the hatches to the capsule and when they could the inward opening door didn't move the way it was supposed to. Eerily the cabin lights of the spacecraft were still functioning although the rescue workers couldn't find the astronauts through the dense smoke that still filled the cabin, although it was beginning to dissipate.

As it cleared they found the bodies. Harvey had removed his restraints and was lying on the floor of the cabin. Nick was found lying sideways near the hatch, clearly having tried to open it. Eddie was found still strapped into his seat, as the procedure was for him to maintain contact with the ground until Nick could open the hatch. Nylon of their spacesuits and used in the cabin interior had melted and fused the astronauts to where they lay which meant that it took nearly 90 minutes to remove their bodies.

There were many immediate questions. But the main ones were: how could such a seemingly safe test go so disastrously wrong? And, why was had this fire proved so deadly?

NASA opened an investigation into the matter immediately.

One of the first main pieces of evidence into the Apollo 1 disaster was the autopsy of the three astronauts. While all three astronauts were found with third degree burns over a large portion of their bodies, the cause of death was found to be cardiac arrest due to carbon monoxide. The burns were considered to have occurred post mortem.

A thorough investigation of the spacecraft found that the interior wiring was "vulnerable", that there was "an excessive distribution of combustible materials" and that the "cabin hatch could not be opened in the event of a fire that causes an increase of pressure". The use of an all oxygen environment and inadequate emergency preparedness were also found to be major factors that resulted in the astronauts' death.

The initial source of ignition however remained a mystery as several electrical arcs were found. The only thing definitive was that the fire started somewhere on Harvey's side of the cabin. What was noted in tests was the wiring that was found to have arced was silver-plated copper. Experiments showed that this type of wiring was prone to arcing while just plain copper or nickel-plated copper was not as hazardous.

There were many redesigns required for the Apollo Command Module, redesigns which meant that Apollo wouldn't fly for at least a year, perhaps even longer.

With the Apollo spacecraft grounded, the American public began to worry that the Soviets would take the lead in the space race once more. Things on the Soviet front had been quiet, they had not launched a man into space in more than two years since the historic first spacewalk of Alexi Leonov on Voskhod 2.

* * *

However while the Americans had been testing equipment and sending men into space with the Gemini program the Soviets had been working on their next spacecraft called Soyuz. And on April 23, 1967 the Soviets launched their first Soyuz spacecraft into space called Soyuz 1 carrying cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.

The Soviet's mission was an ambitious one. The plan was to launch Soyuz 2 the following day carrying three astronauts. The two spacecraft would rendezvous and two of the astronauts from Soyuz 2 would EVA over to Soyuz 1 and return to Earth on Soyuz 1.

However from the outset things were complicated by technical difficulties. The Soyuz craft had two solar panels to provide power, but one of them failed to deploy. The mission goals for Soyuz 2 soon changed to try and repair the solar panel on Soyuz 1 during their EVA. However thunderstorms at the Baikonur Cosmodrome where the Soviet space program was based caused the launch to be cancelled.

Meanwhile up in space Komarov was having even more problems. His orientation detectors failed and by the thirteenth orbit the automatic stabilization system was dead; and the manual system wasn't working particularly well either. The flight director decided to abort the mission and on the eighteenth orbit Komarov fired the retrorockets and began his decent.

On the decent the capsule was in a spin. The drogue chute deployed and slowed the craft slightly. However the spin stopped the drogue chute releasing as it was intended to which prevented the main chute from deploying. Komarov deployed the reserve chute but it became tangled in the lines of the drogue chute and now nothing was slowing the Soyuz's decent.

T he Soyuz crashed into the ground at around forty meters per second. When the rescuers arrived on the scene the Soyuz capsule was in ruins, the exterior was dripping molten metal and was in flames; the entire base of the module was burned through. It was obvious that Komarov had not survived.

It would eventually be learned that political pressure from the leaders of the communist party had led the Soviets to launching an untested and flawed spacecraft; all in the name of besting the Americans.

* * *

The Americans mourned the loss of their Astronauts but they forged ahead. It was known that the quest they were undertaking was dangerous. The CSM was being redesigned and Saturn V was almost flight ready. But then on October 5th, 1967 tragedy once again befell the Astronaut Corps.

Wilbur Wilkins who had served as the backup pilot on Gemini 10, as well as CAPCOM on many of the other missions and was slated to fly on one of the upcoming Apollo missions was flying from Riverdale to his family's home in Mobile, Alabama in one of the NASA T-38's. Wilbur was on his way to visit in father who was dying of cancer. He was flying at over twenty-two thousand feet and was just passing Tallahassee when suddenly a mechanical failure put his jet into an uncontrolled aileron roll.

The airplane dove straight down as Wilbur fought to try and regain control. He fought for control until it was no longer even safe to eject. Still Wilbur attempted to eject but at this point he was barely 1,000 feet above the ground, not enough room for the parachute to properly open. The plane slammed into the ground in between a pair of pine trees less than 100 feet apart without touching either one, although they were singed by the resulting fireball. Wilbur, still strapped to his ejection seat, struck the ground nearby and was killed instantly on impact.

Once again tragedy struck the Astronaut corps. While this wasn't a setback to the whole program like the disaster of Apollo 1 it was felt by all the Astronauts just like the deaths of Alexander Cabot, Raoul Hopper and Cedric van Hauten. It also brought into question NASA's use of the T-38. More astronauts had been killed using these planes than from anything else. However NASA defended it as all three incidents were flukes. The death of Raoul Hopper had been from a bird strike, an outside factor, Alexander Cabot and Cedric van Hauten had been killed due to pilot error caused by weather; and Wilkins death was the result of a mechanical failure due to a maintenance issue. There was no problem with the aircraft itself and NASA continued to use it. They also continued forward despite losing another astronaut.

* * *

Just a little over a month after Wilbur Wilkins fatal crash on November 9, 1967 NASA launched the first test of its massive Saturn V rocket on a mission that the titled Apollo 4. The launch was a full year delayed having originally been scheduled for November of 1966. It included an incomplete CSM not designed for carrying passengers.

The rocket was so powered that it shook ceiling tiles loose at the press building and launch control center which were more than three miles away. However other than this unforeseen incident lift-off went perfectly and placed itself into a circular 100 mile high orbit, which is what would be used on actual missions before the burn to head for the moon.

After two orbits to check the systems of the CSM the third stage of the Saturn V called the S-IVB was fired and the CSM was placed into an orbit that would take it to over 9,000 miles high before returning to earth on a trajectory that would ensure it would hit the earth. This was to test the heat shield to see if it could survive the speed of a return trajectory from the moon.

The Command Module ended up making a fiery re-entry over the Pacific coming down at its designated landing site near Midway Island. With this success Project Apollo was getting back on track.

Two more unmanned missions followed. Apollo 5 on January 22, 1968 was an unmanned flight of the Lunar Module which went according to plan and Apollo 6 was a second test flight of the Saturn V. Apollo 6 had a few issues, the first stage had some pogo oscillations that threatened the structural integrity of the whole rocket. The second stage had two engines shut down prematurely and the third stage did not re-ignite.

The issue with the Pogo oscillation was known and steps were taken to help reduce these in the future. The problem with the second and third stage were likely related since both used the same rocket engines. The second stage had five J-2 engines while the third stage had one. Soon the problem was traced to an issue with the rupturing of a fuel line. This was a fairly simple problem to fix as well and NASA felt that the Saturn V was now ready for a manned flight, the next flights of Apollo would carry a crew.


End file.
